Writing a book is always a journey. Writing an entire series feels more like an odyssey, and that makes me even more grateful for all the help I’ve received along the way with Greystone Secrets.
From the very first book, I have greatly appreciated the way my editor, Katherine Tegen, and everyone else at HarperCollins welcomed the Greystones and their friends into the world. (Er . . . this world. The real one.) This book in particular is so much better because of the questions Katherine asked me during the editing process. I appreciated her tact, consideration, and thoughtfulness throughout the process. Thank you also to Suzanne Murphy, Mark Rifkin, Kathryn Silsand, Sara Schonfeld, Nellie Kurtzman, Ann Dye, Audrey Diestelkamp, Robby Imfeld, Maggie Searcy, Audrey Steuerwald, Aubrey Churchward, Barbara Fitzsimmons, Aurora Parlagreco, Joel Tippie, Molly Fehr, Patty Rosati, Allison Brown, Andrea Pappenheimer, Kathy Faber, and Kerry Moynagh. And I am supremely grateful for the beautiful artwork Anne Lambelet created for the book covers, endpapers, and chapter headings.
When I decided the Gustano family would need to come back in this book, I wanted help thinking about what they would and wouldn’t know about the kidnapping that set the whole series in motion. That also meant thinking about how the police would handle everything. So I decided to lay out the facts the police had—the limited facts without the very necessary detail that an alternate world was involved—to my cousin Karima Tahir, who is a sergeant II with the Los Angeles Police Department. It is a testament to her professionalism that she did not laugh at any of the outlandish details I gave her and went straight into telling me how the police would approach the case. (Maybe it is also a testament to her years of experience dealing with sometimes outlandish reality?) I was so grateful for her patience, her insight, and her perfectly logical questions, even if some of her questions made me laugh. The only cops who ended up in this book were alternate-world ones—and, in the background, ones who just did not know enough to draw the right conclusions. But Karima’s help still played a huge part in setting the groundwork for me, and inspiring certain plot twists.
My sister and her husband and kids—Janet, Robert, Will, Jenna, and Meg Terrell—very helpfully served as consultants on certain kid expressions for the book. They graciously claimed that comparing the sarcasm levels of a kid saying, for example, “Seriously?” versus “Obviously” provided entertainment for them during the spring 2020 coronavirus lockdown—I mean, that kind of thing is always hugely entertaining for me, but I think they were just being kind.
I am always grateful to my entire family, especially my husband, Doug, for their support and encouragement. And I am always grateful as well for my overlapping set of Columbus writer group friends—Jody Casella, Julia DeVillers, Linda Gerber, Lisa Klein, Erin McCahan, Jenny Patton, Edith Pattou, Nancy Roe Pimm, Natalie D. Richards, and Linda Stanek—who feel like fellow travelers on every book journey I make.
This time I have saved my agent, Tracey Adams, to thank almost at the very last, because a journey’s end always makes me think back to the journey’s beginning. That is even more true when a journey becomes an odyssey. Greystone Secrets is the seventh series I’ve worked on, and The Strangers, The Deceivers, and The Messengers were/are my forty-third, forty-fifth, and forty-sixth books. But in many ways this series marked a new beginning for me. I remember sending Tracey a list of possible ideas for what I might write next, back in the fall of 2016. I am so grateful to her for zeroing in on my sketchy, incomplete description of something about a kidnapping and two sibling trios who have way too much in common—something that I described as only a “half idea.” But she confidently assured me, “That’s the One.”
She was right. And her confidence made me confident, too.
My wish for all my readers is that they have as many wonderful family, friends, and helpers around them on all their journeys and odysseys as I do. And as the Greystone kids do.
And thank YOU for reading this book!