A Dirty Job

Author’s Note and Acknowledgments

As with any book, I owe a debt of gratitude to those who helped inspire the book, as well as those who actually helped in the research and production.

For inspiration, my deepest thanks to the family and friends of Patricia Moss, who shared their thoughts and feelings during the time of Pat’s passing. Also thanks to the hospice workers in all capacities, who share their lives and hearts every day with the dying and their families.

The city of San Francisco is always an inspiration, and I’m grateful to her people for letting me stalk their neighborhoods and for being understanding about my teasing. While I’ve tried to “represent” the feeling of the neighborhoods in San Francisco, I’m quite aware that the actual locations in the book, like Charlie’s shop and the Three Jewels Buddhist Center, are not at the addresses indicated. If you find it absolutely necessary to write me to inform me of my inaccuracies, I will be forced to point out that you won’t find giant shampoo-slurping hellhounds in North Beach, either.

I did not go into the storm sewer to confirm the details of descriptions in scenes that take place there, mainly because IT’S THE SEWER! San Francisco is one of the few coastal cities that combine their sewer and storm-drain system—a fact that I completely ignored in my description of that underground world. If you’re really that concerned about how it looks down in the sewers—well—eww. Just take my word for it, all that stuff could happen down there and don’t ruin the story for yourself by being a stickler about the details. There’s a squirrel in a ball gown, for Christ’s sake, just let the sewer thing go.

As for other factual faux pas, I do not know if you can actually pinch a kid’s head off in the electric window of a 1957 Cadillac Eldorado—I just thought it would be cool for this book if you could. Please don’t experiment at home.

My sincere thanks go to Monique Motil, upon whose amazing art the squirrel people are based. I happened across her sculptures, which she calls Sartorial Creatures, at Paxton Gate, a gallery in the Mission district of San Francisco, and was so charmed by their macabre whimsy that I wrote to Monique and asked her if I could bring them alive in A Dirty Job. She graciously gave me permission. You can view Monique’s art at http://www.moniquemotil.com/sartcre.html. You can read about her sideline career as a zombie lounge singer (I’m not kidding) and her passion to bring zombies the sensual gravitas that vampires enjoy at zombiepinups.com.

My thanks to Betsy Aubrey, for her line “I like my men like I like my tea, weak and green,” which, once I heard it, I had to put in a book. (And thanks to Sue Nash, whose tea was, indeed, weak and green.)

For sending me an emergency package of books on Tibetan Buddhism and p’howa when I was under the gun and out of sources, thanks to Rod Meade Sperry at Wisdom Press.

For keeping me fed, my thanks to my agent, Nick Ellison, and Abby Koons and Jennifer Cayea at Nicholas Ellison Inc.

Thanks, too, to my brilliant editor, Jennifer Brehl, who continually makes me look smarter without making me feel stupid. Many thanks to Michael Morrison, Lisa Gallagher, Mike Spradlin, Jack Womack, Leslie Cohen, Dee Dee DeBartolo, and Debbie Stier, who have all kept the faith and kept my books in front of you readers.

And, as usual, my thanks to Charlee Rodgers, for her tolerance and understanding during the writing of this book, as well as for her extraordinary courage and compassion in caring for both of our dying mothers—events that helped shape the very soul of this story.