Acknowledgments

Big thanks and lilacs to:

My Agent of Awesome, Kate McKean, for ongoing support and waffles, and because when I said, “So I have this teen assassin bank novel sitting around, but . . .” she was all over it.

My amazing editors, Liesa Abrams and Michael Strother, and the entire Simon Pulse team, with special hugs and gluten-free ­cupcakes for cover magician Regina Flath and Kelsey Dickson and Katy Hershberger in publicity, who performed a miracle in getting me to Chicago.

Ken Lowery, who provided the music for the playlist that powered the edits.

Jessica Banks for a quick beta read and a lesson in writing disability.

Stephanie Constantin for helping in the Great Title Search and for being an amazing friend.

All the wonderful folks who invited me onto panels and to ­festivals, including Becky at Anderson’s Bookshop and the YA Literature Conference, the fabulous Foxes of FoxTale Book Shoppe, Bev Kodak and the YA Track at Dragon Con, Doctor Q and the Alt History Track at Dragon Con, Lee Whiteside and the ­Phoenix Comicon team, Carol Malcolm of the Urban Fantasy Track at Dragon Con and the Dahlonega Literary Festival, and the ­JordanCon crew. And thanks to the RT Booklovers Convention for letting me attend and accept two awards, even though I clearly had a zombie disease.

All the bloggers and podcasters who have been kind enough to mention the book or host me, including Reddit Fantasy and Reddit YA Writers, Sword & Laser, SF Signal, Functional Nerds, and the Vaginal Fantasy Book Club. Thanks to RT Book Reviews and Fashion by the Book for revealing the cover!

The students of Tinley Park High School and Glenbard East High School in Illinois, who were attentive and kind during my first school visits as a YA author. And thank you all for following the directions and only using “boobs” once in our Mad Libs.

As always, enormous thanks to my best friend and husband, Craig, who always encourages me and feeds me when I forget. Thanks to my children for putting up with me, and my parents and grandparents for cheering me on. Thanks to Team Capybara and the Holy Taco Church and my LitReactor students and Twitter and everyone who keeps me smiling when the writing gets tough.

The hard part about the acknowledgments is that I want to thank everyone and can’t. But just know that if you’re reading this, I appreciate you and would gladly SQUEE and hug you one day.

Read your terms of service, folks!