So, here’s a true thing: The last few books have given me a deep and abiding appreciation for what the team at Tor does for and to my books. I’ve been turning them in more or less at the last possible moment, and still the people at Tor do a magnificent job turning my manuscript into a book that is worth buying and treasuring. I love that they do their job so well; it makes me want to do better for them.
So at Tor, many thanks to Patrick Nielsen Hayden, my editor; his assistant, Anita Okoye; art director Irene Gallo, who selected Nicolas Bouvier aka “Sparth” to do the spectacular cover art (true story: because book production is often like that, Sparth’s art was done before the book, and was so fabulous I made sure there were scenes in the book that could match the cover); book designer Heather Saunders; my publicist, Alexis Saarela; and copy editor Deanna Hoak, whom I especially appreciate because I turned this in at the last possible moment and warned her it would be a hot mess from a copyediting point of view. She not only didn’t murder me, she was totally great about it. Also thanks to Devi Pillai, Lucille Rettino, Fritz Foy, and Tom Doherty.
At Tor UK, many thanks to Bella Pagan and also Lisa Brewster for the deeply blue cover art.
At Audible, thank you as always to Steve Feldberg and his fabulous crew of awesome folks. Relatedly, thank you to Wil Wheaton, because, dude, Wil.
The mighty team of Ethan Ellenberg, Bibi Lewis, Joel Gotler, and Matt Sugarman handle all my agenting and lawyering needs, and I thank them humbly for it.
Thanks to Meg Frank, Olivia Ahl, and Ryvenna Lewis for checking in on me in the final stretch of writing to make sure I wasn’t going completely bonkers. Likewise thank you to Kate Baker, Yanni Kuznia, Mary Robinette Kowal, and many other friends who encouraged me when I needed it.
Extra special thanks to Patty Garcia for her awesomeness over many years.
No thanks to Twitter and Facebook, who tried to suck me in on a daily basis when I needed to be writing.
(But thank you to all my friends and family on Twitter and Facebook, who are amazing.)
And as always thank you to Kristine and Athena Scalzi, wife and daughter respectively, who put up with me far more than I deserve. I would say more, but it’s 7 a.m. and I was up all night finishing the book and now my brain is jelly. Anyway, they know I love them. I tell them every day, and write it in books, like this one, right now.
—John Scalzi, 6/18/18