Kiss Her Once for Me (110)

Thank you to the sensitivity readers who put in emotional work to help me tell this story in the most thoughtful way possible. Esther Kim and Ellie Mae McGregor, your insightful perspectives meant the world to me. Any oversights are my errors alone.

Thank you to my sister, Heather, for reading this book so many times and always offering to read it more. Thank you to Meredith Ryan, for allowing me to borrow your name, and your career, and your amazing hair for the best friend character in this book, and thank you for always being the Aries to my Pisces. Thank you to Michelle Agne, whose name I didn’t use, but who can be found in the best parts of every character I write. Not to be weird, but you’re the person I want to be when I grow up. The three of you make up my heart, and I couldn’t write about love and joy without you. Thank you for sticking beside me through all my seasons of needing.

Thank you to Andie Sheridan, for giving me the title of this book, and for giving me so much of your time and energy. Thank you for all the emails and Google Docs and brainstorms it took to unlock Jack’s character.

Thank you to Jordan, who took on so much during the line edits of this book (aka the hardest four weeks of my life). Thank you for feeding me and cleaning the house and taking care of the dogs while I cried in front of my computer screen. It seems only fitting that I met you while revising this book; you’re worth every risk.

Thank you to the rest of my family—Erin, Mark, Bill, Kim, Brooklyn, and John—who celebrate every victory, no matter how small. Thank you to my grandma, Laverne O’Reilly, who passed away in January 2022, and who influenced so much of who I am today.

Thank you to my Portland friends—Leanna, Sarah, Hayley, Bryan C., Jill, Bryan B., and Julianne—who are so supportive and so very generous with their preorders. Thank you to Nicky, Tiana, Tiffany, Jill, and literally anyone who has ever sent me a photo of The Charm Offensive in an airport bookstore.

Thank you to Portland itself, for being a weird little city where so many queer people feel at home. If you’re not from here—it’s not as awful as they make it out to be on the news, I promise. But Portland, like so many cities in the US, is struggling with a major housing crisis that has only been exacerbated by the pandemic, leaving many of our neighbors housing-insecure. If you’re interested in learning more about how to support the unhoused population in Portland, you can check out resources on my website www.alisoncochrun.com.

Thank you to Venessa Kelley and Leanna Fabian, for the incredible art that helped bring Ellie and Jack to life in my mind. Thank you to all the other artists who answered my questions about animation. And thank you to all the fan artists who are so integral to the romance community and the book community at large.

Thank you to everyone who answered my questions while I researched this book. In particular, thank you to the dozens of Ohio State alums who flooded my DMs so I could include one tiny throwaway detail in this book. Go Buckeyes!

I’m so grateful to other writers who make the process of publishing books a little less lonely. In particular, I want to thank Rachel Lynn Solomon, who is one of the most generous people I’ve ever met, in and out of publishing, and who continually reminds me what it means to show up for other people and be vulnerable with your art. I want to thank Anita Kelly, for being my IRL writer friend. Thank you to Chloe Liese and Mazey Eddings, who write about mental health and neurodivergence so beautifully.

The most specialest of thanks to Timothy Janovsky, because I literally could not have written this book without you. Thank you for reading the prologue over and over again (even though you hate prologues), thank you for letting me word-vomit all my plot problems, and thank you for constantly reminding me you can get away with a lot in a Christmas book.

Thank you to the other #holigays22: Courtney Kae, Helena Greer, and Jake Maia Arlow. It was an honor to release a queer Christmas book alongside you, and I can’t wait to see our books on shelves together.

Thank you to Taylor Swift, for writing evermore, the perfect Christmas album, and for releasing RED TV in the middle of my developmental edits, so I could listen to “Forever Winter” on repeat while rewriting the flashbacks in this book for the millionth time.

“Thank you” is a feeble term to express my gratitude toward all the booksellers and librarians who’ve placed my books into the hands of readers. The same is true of the Bookstagram community. Thank you for reading my books, talking about my books, sharing my books.

Thank you for picking up this book and supporting queer romance authors. Thank you to all the queer romance authors who came before me and paved the way so I could tell a story about two women falling in love.

And finally, thank you to everyone who reached out to me after reading The Charm Offensive to tell me they felt seen or validated by the characters and their experiences with mental health and sexuality. By sharing your stories with me, you made me feel so seen and validated. You made me feel less alone. Putting your art out into the world is always a risk, but you all make it so worth it. I feel so fortunate to be on this writing journey with you.

If, like Ellie, you find yourself frozen by fear, afraid to share your story and yourself, please know I’ve been there, too. And there is joy and connection on the other side.