I would like to thank my beta readers Sheila Gallagher, June Abner, and Kathy Church for their invaluable input and for taking the time to read a work-in-progress complete with typos, inconsistencies and plot holes. Words can’t express how valuable you ladies are to me.
I would also like to thank my Jacksonville critique group for their painstaking and always spot-on analysis of the first draft of the manuscript. Special thanks go to Cheri Roman, Cynthia Enuton, Mark Vance, Tracy Roberts, Rebecca Davis and Rai Roman. Thank you. Every line edit and developmental suggestion was gold to me and allowed me that much more distance from the potential slings and arrows of disappointed readers.
Finally, as usual, love and thanks go to my long-suffering copyeditor, (and husband) Del Kiernan-Lewis. It was a great feeling of security knowing he would catch my mistakes and clean up my confused prose and I know it wasn’t always pretty when I occasionally refused to accept his perfectly logical, clear-headed suggestions. For that I’m sorry. I have to believe that there is a special place in heaven for people like my husband who work hard to catch the boneheaded errors of their writer-wives, only to have them ignored or waived in the name of “creative judgment call.”
So as usual, the good stuff in the book was the result of the help I received from all the kind and smart people I turned to for advice. And the boneheaded stuff is mine alone.