This book was started during the first wave of COVID pandemic, when pictures of bodies loaded into refrigerated trucks were coming out of New York. It came about because an ICU nurse emailed us and asked us to post something, anything, because reading our work on her short break between grueling shifts kept her sane. We don’t have permission to share her name, but she has our deepest gratitude for everything she and other medical professionals, first responders, and essential workers have done for us.
We’d like to thank out agent Nancy Yost, and the awesome crew at NYLA: Sarah Younger, Natanya Wheeler, and Cheryl Pientka, for their support, friendship, and very hard work.
We are grateful to Rebecca Brewer, Stephanie Stogiera, Stefanie Chin, and Katherine Heasley for their editorial services and shaping the manuscript into a book and to Jill Smith and Jessica Haluska, who have read it on short notice and offered feedback.
A lot of people generously helped us make the book better. We’d like to acknowledge Rev. Dr Victoria Hart Gaskell for help with Christian research, Lail Edelsztein and Shani Hochberg for the assistance with Hebrew language and coming up with the name for Moloch’s priests, Pamela Freeman for helping us with Marten’s nickname, and Jesse Wendel, Camilla Cracchiolo, and Karen L Beasley, MD for their knowledge of injuries and medical expertise. We apologize if we have forgotten someone. All errors of fact are our own.
Finally, we’d like to thank our fans. You wanted this book and here it is. We hope it will be fun to read.