Silk

Author’s Note

The section headings have been taken from the successive stages of the arachnid molting process. To quote Dr. Rainer F. Foelix (Biology of Spiders, 1982): “In a strict sense molting comprises two different processes: (1) apolysis, the separation of the old cuticle from the hypodermal cells, and (2) ecdysis, the shedding of the entire old skin (exuvium), which corresponds to what most people think of as molting. Apolysis precedes ecdysis by about one week.”

I would also like to acknowledge the works of Drs. Joseph Campbell and Carl G. Jung (and in particular Synchronicity, 1960) as indispensable resources during the writing of this book.

Silk was written between October 1993 and January 1996, and during the writing and since its original publication in 1998, very many people lent their assistance in very many ways. In particular, I would like to thank (in no particular order) Jada Walker and Katharine Stewart, David Ferguson, Poppy Z. Brite, Peter Straub, Neil Gaiman, the late Kathy Acker, Clive Barker, Joe Daley, Harlan Ellison, Brian Hodge, Charles de Lint, Douglas E. Winter, William Schafer, Liz Scheier, Laura Anne Gilman, Merrilee Heifetz, Laura Tucker, Richard Curtis, Kelly Hall, Paula Guran, Darren McKeeman, Ed Bryant, Victor Stabin, Christa Faust, Barry Hoffman, Tamara Babyock-Zannis, Matthew Grasse, Scott Crumpton, and Kathryn Pollnac. Also, I would like to note that the Birmingham, Alabama, appearing in this novel is a fictional, wishful fusion of Athens, Georgia, in the early 1990s and Birmingham in the late 1980s and, as such, has never existed outside the pages of Silk. Don’t go looking for it anywhere else.