Acknowledgments

One year I am helping to create The Republic, through articles and character bios for INN, and consulting on back history. The next, I’m doing my damnedest to tear it apart. Sometimes it feels like one of those old military make-work projects. Dig a hole; then fill it back in. Except that not all of the dirt ever makes it back into the hole. It gets scattered around, lost in the grass and clumped into the treads of work boots.

And that’s where all of our stories come from—when the pieces do not fit back together quite so nicely as when we took them apart.

I would like to thank everyone at WizKids for their tireless support in this process: Jordan and Dawne Weisman, Maya Smith, and Mike and Sharon Mulvihill, among so many others. Also the wonderful people I have been privileged enough to work with at Roc—Laura Anne Gillman, who will be missed, and Jennifer Heddle, with whom I always look forward to working—and Vic Milán, who wrote one hell of a book and ended up being a hard act to follow.

Best wishes to my agent, Don Maass, and to his office staff for their hard work on my behalf. A hearty thanks to Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch for their continued support, mentoring, and friendship.

Speaking of friends . . . thanks again go to Allen and Amy Mattila, Randall and Tara Bills, Phil DeLuca, Kelle Vozka, and Peter and Cathy Orullian, all of whom help keep me relatively sane by dragging me away from my computer from time to time. And then there are Oystein Tvedten, Herb Beas, Chris Hartford, Chris Trossen, Pete Smith, Chas Borner, and Warner Doles, who always seem ready to drag me back. Special acknowledgments go out to Dave Stansel for his recent efforts, and Mike Stackpole, who continues to keep in touch with everything.

My heartfelt appreciation also goes out to my wife, Heather Joy, who continues to indulge my selfish need to lock myself away for days and weeks. And to my children, Talon, Conner, and Alexia, who pick that lock all too regularly or not often enough—I can’t decide.

And because I would find hair balls on my pillow if I didn’t: thanks to Chaos, Rumor, and Ranger, our Siamese cats, for keeping our house in strict order. (And Loki, our dog, for his frequent infusions of happy chaos.)

 

For he owned and displayed such remarkable ability that even as a private person it was spoken of him that he lacked nothing but the kingdom to be a king.

The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli