Magic Bites

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I’m greatly indebted to my editor at Ace Books, Anne Sowards, for her excellent editorial guidance and her great kindness and patience during all those times I needed reassurance, which was far too often. I would also like to thank my agent, Jack Byrne of Sternig and Byrne Literary Agency, for his wonderful advice and unfaltering support. I’m grateful to Annette Fiore and Kristen del Rosario, the designers, and Chad Michael Ward, the artist, for the fantastic cover and design; to Megan Gerrity, the production editor, and her staff for making this book possible; and to Maggie Kao, Ace’s publicist, for all of her hard work.

I’m most grateful to Charles Coleman Finlay, Ellen Key Harris-Braun, and Jenni Smith-Gaynor of Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror for believing in my work before anybody else did. I thank Deanna Hoak for answering my endless questions. And a big thank-you to everyone who has read and commented on the draft of this work: Hannah Wolf Bowen, Jeff Stanley, Nora Fleischer, Lawrence Payne, Mark Jones, Del Whetter, Steve Orr, A. Wheat, Betty Foreman, Catherine Emery, Elizabeth Hull, Susan Curnow, Richard C. Rogers, Aaron Brown, David Emanuel, Jodi Meadows, Christiana Ellis, Kyri Freeman, Elizabeth Bear, Mary Davis, and especially Charlene L. Amsden.

Finally I would like to apologize to the city of Atlanta, whose beautiful architecture I’ve treated so badly in the name of artistic license.