Acknowledgements

Many friends, family members, and academic colleagues read parts of this collection as they were first being written. I owe deep thanks to all of them and to the staff at the John Hay Library of Brown University, especially those associated with the H. P. Lovecraft Collection.

Of my readers and supporters, special thanks go to the following: Helen Peppe, close friend and the first editor to publish one of my stories; Benjamin Rybeck, former student, friend, new novelist; and B. Margaret Goscilo and Lisa Walker, scholars and theorists of rare insight. Well-established writer of fiction, memoir, and non-fiction Mary Lee Coe Fowler provided much more excellent advice than I had any right to expect.

Paramount among these people who were generous and helpful stands Lee Hope, writer, editor, founder of academic programs, and visionary. My many dialogues with her about teaching, publishing, and writing kept me from abandoning fiction altogether. I still possess the notes she wrote on many rough, probably awful, drafts of the stories in this collection.