This one was a long time in the making. I think if I look back at the very first draft, I’d find it was about eight years ago the germ of this story formed into a rough draft of 75,000 words or so. Even then, when I was still unpublished, I knew I had something in those words. Over the intervening time, it’s been through multiple revisions and several sets of eyes. Between then and now, a few other books have been written and published. I’ll do my best to remember everyone, but some days I forget what I had for breakfast.
I wrote the first drafts of this using Google Maps to get the feel of certain locations. Later, I attended When Words Collide—a great writer’s convention in Calgary, Alberta, Canada—followed by WorldCon in San Jose. I took that opportunity to drive through the majority of the West Coast of the United States to visit some of the locations in person. Gaston, Oregon is a beautiful small town. I ended up there later in the evening, and slept in my Jeep beside a small sports field. The sprinklers going off in the morning woke me up. When I reached Salem, I parked and walked parts of the same route Darwin and Teresa did, getting the feel of where Rob saw them, and where the camp was set up. Alpine, California was the complete opposite of the lush green around Gaston, and visiting there really helped me figure out how SafeHaven would operate. The border crossing from Oregon into California is a real place, pirates and all. Those pirates got some comments from my editor, but I managed to keep them. I wish I could travel for every book.
I’ll start with my beta readers, as is usual. These are the fine folk that catch the stupid mistakes that creep in and gleefully point them out while laughing (with me, or so I’ve been told). They also catch the subtle little things that a writer no longer sees after working on a book for a long time. Some only see typos or the odd character getting a sudden name change. All of them are helpful in their own way, and so greatly appreciated: Evan Braun, Sherry Peters, Bev Geddes, and Julie Czerneda were the only ones that saw those early meanderings. Sharon Bass, Marnie Kacher, Bev, and Sherry looked at some of the later iterations.
The cover artwork was done by the Penguin Random House in-house art department, and the starting point they gave me to look at was absolutely stunning. The final product you see on this book is so close to that original art. Thank you so much!
There are so many great people at DAW that have their fingerprints all over this final product. Sheila Gilbert, my wonderful (two-time Hugo Award-winning) editor. I always look forward to our editing phone calls with joy and a little trepidation. Her insight is a wonder to behold, and always makes me look like a better writer than I really am. Joshua Starr makes sure everything is on schedule and is my interface to the copy editor and production staff. I’ll tell you, this guy knows how to keep things going. I don’t get to know who my copy editor is on any book or series . . . although I’ve never tried asking either. To the wonderful soul who copy edited this book, thank you so much! Being Canadian, I sometimes get things wrong when setting things in the US, and (among many other things) they caught all of those mistakes and assumptions. And to all the others I only see at conventions or via infrequent emails . . . thanks for all you do!
Even further behind the scenes, but no less important, is the work my agents do. Sara Megibow of KT Literary handles the book side of the business, and without her, I’d be lost in the world that is publishing. Jerry Kalajian at IPG deals with the even more convoluted world of Hollywood. Thank you both for all you do.
I did a reading of a very small section of Threader Origins in 2019 at Minicon in Minneapolis, and I’d like to throw out a huge thank you to everyone who attended, and then got mad at me when I told them the book wouldn’t be out until 2021. Well, here it is. I hope the rest of the book holds up to what you heard that day.
I’ll finish where everything starts, with my family. You helped me with this book every day, whether you realized it or not. I am, and will be, forever grateful to have you in my life.
Gerald
2020-04-30