I’ve got to thank amazing author Stacy Gregg who I met at a Storylines event in Dunedin in 2015. She reminded me just how good horse stories are. It’s because of her that Annie has Blue in this book. Stacy, I hope I got all of the horse stuff right! And also my thanks to Jan and Ian MacKenzie, Wayne and Bronwyn Smaill, and Colin and Barbara Chalmers, for also answering all my questions about pacers and quarter horses and barrel racing and saddles and bridles and everything else I needed to know about horses. Thanks guys. Now we can talk about other stuff, like cows and sheep and tractors.
Thank you to all of the good friends we have in Westport – the Jacksons, O’Connors, Hamiltons, Parsons, Milnes, Keoghans and Coburns, who we can always call in on at any time and they always welcome us home.
Thank you to M for taking me and the rest of my family on that trip through the Buller River Gorge many years ago – not on the road side.
Thank you to the fantastic team at Allen & Unwin in Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland. Without you this story wouldn’t be told. Thank you to Eva, Susannah, Hilary, Sophie, Angela, Julia, Jo and everyone else who has been involved. Thank you also to my amazing agent Grace Heifetz at Curtis Brown Australia.
Thank you to John McIntyre of the Wellington Children’s Bookshop, who told me he wanted so much to read this book, especially as he had grown up at Jacksons near Otira on the West Coast. John, we were so lucky to have you. We miss you.
And thank you to Country Blue, who I once galloped down Fairdown Beach, totally out of control, until we had to stop at the mouth of Whareatea River. And I didn’t fall off.