I am deeply grateful to a wide spectrum of individuals and organizations for their inspiration, education, and cooperation. First of all, my thanks to my father who art in Austin, Adam Blatner, whose brainstorming and encouragement were invaluable. My agent, Reid Boates, who talked me into what became the hardest project of my career, and publisher, George Gibson, who believed I could pull it off. And to my editor, Lea Beresford, and designer (and longtime friend), Scott Citron, who were crucial in the process. Thanks, too, to Nancy Chamberlain, Cynthia Merman, and Nicole Lanctot for checking my work and cleaning this up, and to Lisa Silverman for shepherding the process beautifully. My gratitude, too, to Paul Nash, Xa Shaw Stewart, and the rest of the Bloomsbury team, for their help in the often-tricky eBook conversion process.
“Even though you can’t see or hear them at all, a person’s a person, no matter how small.”
—Dr. Seuss, Horton Hears a Who!
Many thanks to the American Museum of Natural History, the King County Library System, and Amazon.com, who fed my habit. A shout out of thanks to the Lyons’ Den, Peets Coffee, and Café Ladro, without whose “inspiration juice” this book would have had far fewer adjectives; to Daft Punk, Delerium, Garmana, and Jean Michel Jarre, who gave it a beat; to the makers of DEVONthink Pro, who helped me keep all the pieces together; and to the beautiful Inn at Langley, where the final words were typed. To my friends and family, including Gabriel, Daniel, Mom, Richard, Allee, Don, Snookie, Suzanne, Damian, Lucia, Alisa, Paul, Camille, Zoe, Edna, Ted, Ruth, Glenn, Jeff, Mark, and Anne-Marie.
And my deepest appreciation to my wife and partner, Debbie Carlson, who reminds me that words are important and life is magical.