Acknowledgments

When you’re creating a book for a traditional publisher, your creativity is always going dancing with the business side. Sometimes, that goes smoothly; other times not. Sometimes, you have all the time in the world to write a book—and sometimes, you have to sew your own parachute as you’re falling. Which can be exciting in its own way. Cursed Boys and Broken Hearts was created like that. I was touring one book and revising another. And somewhere in the chaos of all that, Grant’s second-chance story needed to get written.

Typical Grant, last in line.

But then something wonderful happened: Cursed Boys flew out of me and became my best, most personal book I’d ever written. It wasn’t just going to be about Grant’s second chance—it was going to be about my own. Vero Roseto is an amalgamation of my husband’s Italian family and the home my mother grew up in—where I spent so many magical summers with my cousins until my grandmother’s death when I was a teenager. The outside of Vero Roseto is fantasy—no vineyard or fabulous wishing roses—but the inside of the home is nearly identical to my Vero Roseto: the patio pool; the parlor just inside; the laundry flap leading into the basement, where my uncle kept fireworks and my grandfather kept pickled vegetables he grew in his personal garden; the other, lighter side of the basement that housed books, games, costumes, the billiard table, and most importantly of all, the ancient slot machine, which everyone in the family remembers fondly. Grant and his loved ones save Vero Roseto.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t save mine. It gives me a great sadness to think about it, and like Grant, sometimes, I dream I’m there. I consider writing a book to be like creating a dream that you then invite readers inside to experience with you. This book, more than anything, is meant to be a recording of my memories of that home we lost, of those beautiful summers we can’t get back, and to invite my nieces and cousins’ children (and hopefully, someday, children of my own) inside the dream of Vero Roseto, so they can know what a marvelous thing a family can be—and how easily it can all fall apart if people stop trying.

With that, some heartfelt thanks are in order. To my mother, thank you for keeping your family all together as long as you could—even to this day. There’s a lot of you in Aunt Ro. To my mother-in-law, you’ve kept your own family going through some terrible storms, something your own mother did that you took on after she was gone. I’m sorry I never got to meet her. There’s a lot of you in Aunt Ro, as well.

When a book gets this personal, editing can get treacherous. My editor, Kelsey Murphy, and I navigated some rough terrain as we kept stumbling on creative issues in scenes that were emotional landmines for me. Once again, creativity goes dancing with business, and it isn’t always smooth. Thank you, Kelsey, and Kate and the Dovetail team, for your patience while we figured out creative solutions to emotional sore spots. Additional thanks to designer Kaitlin Yang and illustrator Anne Pomel for another divine, golden cover, as well as the tireless folks at Penguin Teen’s publicity, marketing, social, sales, and school and library teams. Without you, my stories would just be me talking to a brick wall. You actually get them into people’s hands!

To Eric Smith, thank you for making sure I took that call about doing a rom-com—I would’ve never found Grant if I hadn’t. To Chelsea Eberly, thank you for finding Grant (and Micah) their proper home. And thanks to Michael Bourret, jumping into the middle of a project already in motion is never easy, but you did it for three projects!

When you don’t have a ton of time to draft a book, that means you don’t have a ton of time to revise, so the first draft needed to hit the runway hard. I couldn’t have done that without my personal creative team. To Terry, our talks about big memory places was my first indication that—oh my God—I might actually have something powerful here, so thanks for reading outside your genre just for me! To Stags, your love of all things Micah kept me motivated when my own confidence faltered, and I’m so happy I’ve learned to just shut up and listen to you. To David, thank you for all the worldbuilding work you did on 99 Boyfriends, with Elliot, Micah, and Grant, so that by the time my fingers touched the keyboard to write Grant’s story, I already knew him inside and out. And to Simeon, thank you for always reminding me that I’d already written my sweet rom-com—now I needed to get real: this was a love story between two Chicago gays, so they needed to be beasts!

To all the booksellers who’ve been such lighthouses for me in the dark, churning seas of publishing, thank you: most notably, Simeon and Stags again, Miracle, and James. And to Marco Locatelli, my friend and fellow writer, thank you for helping me with the Italian translations—language, meaning, and its effects are the lifeblood of writing, so without your guidance, I’d be wearing clown makeup.

Finally, to my husband, Michael, and our dogs, Marty and Malibu—thank you for being my home. Cursed Boys is the final chapter of a four-book-long “first act” about lost, lonely young queers finding their way home, and I could never have written these books confidently without you all. I wished for you, and I go on wishing for you.

Ti desiderio.