Acknowledgments

As a writer I spend my days swapping souls, imagining this or that perspective, deciding who gets sharpened and who gets dulled when they scrape up against one another.

Which is just to say that I bullshit for a living.

The best way to bullshit, of course, is to surround yourself with bullshitters, so I’ve gradually become one of those coffee shop writers. Disciple of the Dog was almost entirely written in a wonderful little place called The Black Walnut. If you’ve been there, then I owe you my thanks, one bullshitter to another.

Specifically, I need to thank Michele Lenhardt, Roy Cook, and Rhia Baines, for putting up with me and my geeky sense of humour, and for brewing the best damn coffee south of Toronto. I especially need to thank Ashlan Potts, for being one of those exceptional people who forge families wherever they go.

I need to thank the usual suspects, Adrienne Kerr at Penguin, Eric Raab at Tor, Jon Wood at Orion, and of course, my agent, Chris Lotts, who I’m convinced has a better sense of character and story than the bulk of his clients, me included. I should also thank Dan Mellamphy for our conversations on the ways memory impacts experience, my brother,Bryan Bakker, for carrying the tune when I sang out of key, and my brother-in-law, Rick O’Brien, for innumerable drunken, dirty-minded gems.

This has been a big year for my wife Sharron and I. After almost twenty years of student living, we have finally settled down, and welcomed a little baby girl into our life ...

Ruby.

The one soul I’ve made, but did not imagine. My first true creation, and far and away the most beautiful.

Thank you, Sharron.