Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3)(156)

As for Will’s mad ride across the countryside from London to Wales, I am indebted to Clary Booker, who helped me map the route, found inns that Will would have stayed at on the way, and speculated on the weather. As much as possible I tried to stick to roads and inns that did exist. (The Shrewsbury-Welshpool road is now the A458.) I have been to Cadair Idris myself and climbed it, visited Dolgellau and Tal-y-Llyn, and seen Llyn Cau, though never jumped in to see where it would take me.

Blackfriars Bridge exists of course, then and now, and the description of it in the epilogue is as close to my experience of the bridge as I could make it. The Infernal Devices began with a daydream of Jem and Tessa on Blackfriars Bridge, and I think it is fitting that it ends there too.





Acknowledgments


Special thanks to Cindy and Margaret Pon for help with Mandarin Chinese; Clary Booker for mapping Will’s journey from London to Cadair Idris; Emily-Jo Thomas for help with Will’s and Cecily’s Welsh; Aspasia Diafa, Patrick Oltman, and Wayne Miller for help with Latin and ancient Greek. Thank you to Moritz Wiest for scanning the whole manuscript so it could be delivered during Hurricane Sandy.

Much thanks for familial support from my mother and father, as well as Jim Hill and Kate Connor; Nao, Tim, David, and Ben; Melanie, Jonathan, and Helen Lewis; Florence and Joyce. To those who read and critiqued and pointed out anachronisms—Sarah Smith, Delia Sherman, Holly Black, Kelly Link, Ellen Kushner, Clary Booker—tons of thanks. And thanks to those whose smiling faces and snarky remarks keep me going another day: Elka Cloke, Holly Black, Robin Wasserman, Emily Houk, Maureen Johnson, Libba Bray, and Sarah Rees Brennan. My always-gratitude to my agent, Russell Galen; my editor, Karen Wojtyla; and the teams at Simon & Schuster and Walker Books for making it all happen. And lastly, my thanks to Josh, who brought me tea and cats while I worked.