Acknowledgements

First and most importantly, thank you to my Mini Boot Squad, for all the magic you have brought me since we started back in June 2006. M1, M2, Bix, and Smith, you help me make everything better and, in sharing my journey, enhanced the joy. I don’t want to be a writer without you.

Additional thanks to Lisa Mondello, Ava Quinn, and Jody Wallace for helping me in ways I can never repay. And even greater thanks to Tracy Madison, for reading chapter one over and over (and then the rest of the book!), nursing me through my neuroses, and gushing like a fangirl at appropriate moments. You are a complete gem.

Liz Pelletier has the honor of being the first publisher to ever offer me a contract by phone. Thank you, Liz, for staying up to 3:30 a.m. to read Under the Moon and giving me the opportunity to be part of an amazing company like Entangled Publishing. Thanks, too, for assigning me to Kerri-Leigh Grady. Starting work with a new editor is frightening, but KL, you’ve made this one of the best experiences of my career. Thank you for your insights, your confidence, and your support. You rock.

To Eric Kripke, for helming a television show that sparked my imagination and helped me remember both the new feeling of being in love and the despair of choices too hard to make, so that I could pour them into this book. And finally, to Jason Manns, whose music I discovered when this book was first born, so many years ago. I will always think of honeyed clouds and motorcycles when I listen to you sing.