Anansi Boys

Acknowledgments

To begin with, an enormous bunch of flowers to Nalo Hopkinson, who kept a helpful eye on the Caribbean dialogue and not only told me what I needed to fix but suggested ways to fix it; and also to Lenworth Henry, who was there on the day I made it all up, and whose voice I heard in the back of my head when I was writing it (which is why I was delighted to hear that he would be narrating the audio book).

As with my last adult novel, American Gods, I was given two bolt-holes while I was writing this novel. I started writing it in Tori’s spare house in Ireland, and I finished it there as well. She is a most gracious hostess. At one point in the middle, hurricanes permitting, I worked in Jonathan and Jane’s spare house in Florida. It’s a good thing to have friends with more houses than they have bodies, especially if they’re happy to share. Most of the rest of the time I wrote in the local coffee house, and drank cup after cup of terrible tea in a rather pathetic demonstration of hope over experience.

Roger Forsdick and Graeme Baker gave up their time to answer my questions about the police, and fraud, and extradition treaties, while Roger also showed me around the cells, fed me dinner, and looked over the finished manuscript. I’m very grateful.

Sharon Stiteler kept an eye on the book to make sure the birds passed muster and she answered my birding questions. Pam Noles was the first person to read any of the book, and her responses kept me going. There was a small host of other people who lent me their eyes and minds and opinions, including Olga Nunes, Colin Greenland, Giorgia Grilli, Anne Bobby, Peter Straub, John M. Ford, Anne Murphy and Paul Kinkaid, Bill Stiteler, and Dan and Michael Johnson. Errors of fact or of opinion are mine, not theirs.

Thanks also go to Ellie Wylie; Thea Gilmore; The Ladies of Lakeside; to Miss Holly Gaiman, who turned up to help whenever she decided I needed a sensible daughter around; to the Petes of Hill House, Publishers; to Michael Morrison, Lisa Gallagher, Jack Womack, and Julia Bannon; and to Dave McKean.

Jennifer Brehl, my editor at Morrow, was the person who persuaded me that the story I told her over lunch that day really would make a good novel, at a time when I really wasn’t sure what the next novel was going to be, and she sat patiently when I phoned her up one night and read her the first third of the book. For these things alone she should be sainted. Jane Morpeth at Headline is the kind of editor writers hope to get if they’re very good and eat all their vegetables. Merrilee Heifetz at Writers House, with the assistance of Ginger Clark, and, in the U.K., Dorie Simmonds, are my literary agents. I’m lucky to have them all on my side, and I know just how lucky I am.

Jon Levin keeps the world of movies running for me. My assistant, Lorraine, helped keep me writing and made really good cups of tea.

I don’t think I could have written Fat Charlie without having had both an excellent but embarrassing father and wonderful but embarrassed children. Hurrah for families.

And a final thank you to something that didn’t exist when I wroteAmerican Gods : to the readers of the journal at www.neilgaiman.com, who were always there whenever I needed to know anything, and who, between them all, as far as I can tell, know everything there is to be known.

Neil Gaiman,

June 2005