ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Dan Breen continues as my first reader. I make mistakes. He catches as many as he can.
Dan, Dorothy Day, and Karen Zimmerman, my webmaster, store my texts against a disaster which engulfs central North Carolina. (Well, if it gets all of central North Carolina, Dan is gone also. Which I would regret if I were around.)
Karen and Evan Ladouceur provided continuity help when I asked for it. It’s probable that I should have asked more often than I did, but my focus is always on the story and I tend to ignore other stuff. I know that there are people to whom the continuity is very important and I apologize to them, but that just isn’t what I care about.
John and Val Lambshead not only guided me to settings which I later used for scenes but also provided logistics support for the research. This became an acute problem when my business credit card was blocked (my fault) and could not be cleared while I was out of the US (very much the fault of the Bank of America).
I had various computer adventures. (Actually, I’m having another one as I type this, but thus far it’s only affecting one of my notebooks.) My son Jonathan saved me each time, among other things by converting all the machines to Win10 and recreating the local area network (which didn’t survive the upgrade).
(Come to think, one problem I fixed myself. After a week I realized that the cleaning lady had moved the wireless router to a place she thought was more attractive but which blocked the signal. During that week I used flash drives to transfer my data. I’m not very computer literate, but I’m very good at finding work-arounds.)
My wife Jo keeps house (which I’m sure is frustrating, because she knows not to move stuff, and I’m messy when I’m working…which is most of what I do), and feeds me fresh food cooked in tasty fashion. I’m in good shape for a man of my age, which is as much due to the meals I’m fed as to my daily exercise.
To them and to those whose help I’ve forgotten to mention, my sincere thanks.
—Dave Drake