ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There are too many people to whom the authors are, in one way or another, deeply indebted to mention here without seriously increasing the raw paper and/or digitization costs of this book. So here’s only the very tip of an enormous, guilt-inducing, iceberg of people. If you don’t see your name here, we’re very sorry, but rest assured that you’re probably somewhere just below the water line.
First, many thanks to Tom Rickey, Ron Pool, and Natalia Padilla for their inspiration. It should also be mentioned that they are not quite as macho, klutzy, or psionic as the characters which they inspired.
Thanks also to Sean Redlitz and the SciFi Channel’s official website, who years ago set aside some room on their server for Zach and his adventures (and then graciously removed the material from the site so we could make some actual money selling the material in book form).
Additional thanks go to Mark Reichelt, Mike Segroves and Peanut Press who, in the early days of electronic publishing, gave the story life as an e-book where it reigned supreme as a bestseller until being displaced by the electronically ubiquitous Stephen King (which, as company goes, is not too shabby).
And still more thanks go to Betsy Wollheim, our editor at DAW, Sean Fodera who brought the book to DAW's attention and to Joshua Bilmes and the entire JABberwocky team for the eradication of all loose ends and matters of legal minutiae and for dealing with all the headaches and problems that we continue to give them.
Many thanks as well to all of those who have laughed (in a good way) at John and Larry over the years, among them: Mary and Steve Erdman, Mitch Ganem, Jennifer Ganem, Dan Gilligan, Dave Martin, Tom Swett, Tom Bickford, Rich Ashooh, John Nasser, Dave Hernandez and Jen Quimby.
Thanks to John’s parents, Mike and Evelyn Zakour, and to Larry’s parents, Philip and Shirley Ganem, as well as every Zakour, Ganem, Abraham, Brown or Essa who has ever walked the face of the earth. But thank you especially to Barbara Essa, who has always been, and will forever be, dear to our hearts.
John would also like to thank his creditors who were the true driving force behind his selling this story in all its incarnations.
And above all else, our deepest and most sincere gratitude goes to … wait a second, you’re not actually still reading this are you? It’s the acknowledgement, for crying out loud. No one reads the acknowledgement. Don’t you have anything better to do? Start reading the book already, will you? It’s very good. We promise. Really, don’t waste your time with the acknowledgement. We only included this so our family and friends wouldn’t complain about us not mentioning them in the book. Now please, move on to the next page. You’re starting to embarrass yourself.