Acknowledgments

Thanks to all the journal and anthology editors who first published these stories.

 

I stole material for many of them. Thanks to Tom Burke, Nathan Deuel, Elizabeth Ellen, Kevin Keck, and Tony Walsch for being agreeable victims.

 

These stories have been a long time coming and many have had my back along the way, sometimes without even knowing. Thanks to Aaron Burch, JJ Butts, Mary Caponegro, Igor Chesnokov, Tony Earley, Jon Fink, Arthur Flowers, the folks, John Goldbach, Mikhail Iossel, Josh Knelman, Phil LaMarche, Adam Levin, Mima, my wife, Natural Light, Jason Ockert, Robert Olmstead, Crystal Parker, Tiffany Parker, Padgett Powell, Russki Standart, George Saunders, the Sewanee Writer’s Conference, Briggs Seekins, Meg Storey, and Ashley Vaught.

 

Special thanks to the Croatian Sensation Josip Novakovich.

 

Another special thanks to Stephen Lyons and John Jenkins at DECODE for publishing the limited edition chapbook The Back of the Line with images by my man/genius William Powhida, which make the James stories much better. (More info on that can be found at http://www.decodebooks.com/bookstore.html.)

 

As always, thanks to Ellen Levine.

 

And finally thanks to everyone at Dzanc Books, designer Steven Seighman for taping flyers to a telephone pole, Mary Gillis for copyediting, and especially Steve Gillis and Dan Wickett. Most publishers are content that the work they publish is impact on the world enough. Dzanc ups the ante, giving to kids and the incarcerated and more. It’s an honor to be associated with them.