I am grateful for the opportunity to finally thank everyone who has contributed to the success of Gossip Girl. No thanks does justice to the thanks I owe my friend and editor at Little, Brown, Cindy Eagan—beyond! You are the ultimate it girl behind each book’s triumph, never uttering a doubting word, always 2,000 percent positive, hysterically funny, and just what I needed. To my friend and editor at Alloy Entertainment, Sara Shandler, always so perceptive, sympathetic, secretly cynical, ridiculously funny, and impossible to get off the phone. Thank you to my friend Josh Bank at Alloy Entertainment for being my ally, for making me laugh when I’m grumpy, and for directing my ideas into something that makes sense. We’ll always have Last Dog. Thank you to my friend Les Morgenstein at Alloy Entertainment for not treating me like an idiot even when I act like one, and for not hanging up when I cried over the phone all those times. And thank you to everyone else at Little, Brown and Alloy Entertainment over the years for all their behind-the-scenes hard work. I couldn’t have done it without you. Thanks ever so much to my agent, Suzanne Gluck, for seeing past the idiot savant and taking me on. Thank you to Liz and Papa, for your love and pride and for being the ultimate guerilla marketers, you made the books bestsellers. Omi, I could never have written this book or any of the others without your love, support, and help, especially with the children. I can’t imagine what I did to deserve you. Thank you Erasmo for bringing music into my children’s lives. Thank you to my children for really getting that I can like what I do and love them too. And thank you Richard, you know I love you.
Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone I mentioned and everyone I missed. It has been a wild and wicked ride.