Usually, acknowledgments exist to thank all the friends and family members who kept the authors watered, fed, and comforted through the writing and publication process. But 2020 was an unusual year by anyone’s standards, so we figured we’d break the usual format.
We’re grateful to the doctors, nurses, and other medical and emergency personnel who kept the health system functional and beds open for the people who needed them, often at the cost of their own physical and mental health.
We’re grateful to the essential workers who kept the rest of our society functioning—again, risking their own health and well-being.
We’re grateful to the Black Lives Matter protesters and other activists who once again took to the streets and the halls of power to protest the systemic racism embedded in our policing and judicial institutions.
We’re grateful to the officials who pushed for fair and free elections, working tirelessly against a tide of antidemocratic rhetoric and policy to make voting accessible and to see that every vote was counted.
We’re grateful to the researchers who developed the vaccines that would let us return to something approaching normalcy, and to all the organizations that have been striving to make those vaccines accessible to the whole world.
In the smaller milieu of our social pod, we’re grateful to Kyle Niedzwiecki and Adrienne Lipoma for letting us take over the den for most of the summer lockdown so we could escape into Nadežra, and particularly to Adrienne, who gave the authors’ egos some badly needed pats on the head as we threaded our way through a complicated draft. Thank you also to the players of The Path to Power—Kyle, Adrienne, Emily Dare, and Wendy Shaffer—for being patient with the game going on hiatus when writing and the world became too much to deal with. Thanks to all the friends and family who supported us virtually, and especially to Carlie St. George and Conna Condon for their comments on the draft.
The teams at Orbit and Orbit UK have been amazing to work with. Thank you to our editor, Priyanka Krishnan, for wanting more flirting and banter and for giving us the room to let the relationships flourish. Thanks to Ellen Wright and Nazia Khatun for all your work bringing the Rook & Rose series to the eyes of enthusiastic readers. Thanks to Nikki Massoud, Thomas Mis, and the rest of the audiobook team for putting together a cracking good read. Thanks to Tim Paul for a lovely fantasy map of our city, and to Lauren Panepinto and Nekro for the absolutely beautiful book and cover design.
Last but not least, many thanks to our agents, Eddie Schneider and Paul Stevens, for taking care of business so we can focus on the writing.
And finally, to anyone else we ought to thank, we plead the amnesia of 2020. We are grateful to you all.