The Obelisk Gate

Acknowledgments

Thanks to this trilogy, I now have greater respect for authors who write million-word sagas spanning five, seven, ten volumes or more. Like it or not, whether it makes you think “yay” or “nope” whenever you hear about it, let me tell you: Telling a single long involved story is hard, y’all. Mad respect to the multi-volumers.

And great thanks this time go to my day-job boss, who finagled me a flextime schedule that made finishing this book in one year possible; to my agent and editor, as usual, who both put up with my periodic hour-long phone rants about how “everything is wrong forever”; to Orbit’s publicist Ellen Wright, who patiently puts up with my forgetting to tell her about, well, everything (stop checking work e-mail on holidays, Ellen); to fellow Altered Fluidian and medical consultant Danielle Friedman, who did a light-speed beta-read on short notice; to fellow Fluidian Kris Dikeman, who helped me design and build my own personal volcano (long story); to WORD Books in Brooklyn, which let me use their space free for the Magic Seismology Launch Party; to my father, who ordered me to slow down and breathe; to the girls of the Octavia Project, who reminded me of how far I’ve come and what all this is really for; to my therapist; and finally to my ridiculous cat KING OZZYMANDIAS, who seems to have perfected the art of jumping off the bookcase onto my laptop just when I need a writing break.