ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I doubt any book in this series has been more difficult to assemble than this one. My sincere thanks to Jason Williams, Jeremy Lassen, and Ross Lockhart at Night Shade Books for their confidence in this book and in the series; to Marty Halpern for his indefatigable, detailed copy editing on the series; to Alex, Alisa, and Tansy for their support when I felt a bit lost with this book; and to each and every writer who has been connected with the book, regardless of whether their stories appear here or not. I would especially like to thank those writers who came through under pressure when I’d begun to wonder is this book would happen at all, and to give an extra special nod to Gwyneth Jones, who waited so long for this to appear, and to Jim Kelly, who persevered long after anyone else might have given up.
Finally, as always, my deepest thanks to my wife Marianne and daughters Jessica and Sophie, from whom each and every moment spent working on this book was stolen.