Only a Monster(Monsters #1)(107)
At Hodder & Stoughton in the UK, thank you so much to my wonderful editor Molly Powell, and to Callie Robertson, Kate Keehan, Lydia Blagden, the cover artist Kelly Chong, and to the whole amazing team for all your great work and your vision for the book. Heartfelt thanks, as well, to the wonderful Anissa and everyone at FairyLoot. Working with you—and Hodder & Stoughton—to create the gorgeous FairyLoot special edition has been a dream come true.
At Allen & Unwin in Australia, thank you to the whole amazing team—Kate Whitfield, Jodie Webster, Eva Mills, Sandra Nobes, Liz Kemp—and everyone else who has worked on the book. I’m so grateful for all you’ve done. It’s wonderful to have such a fantastic local publisher and local support.
Huge thanks also to the teams at Eksmo in Russia, Penguin Random House in Spain, Piper in Germany, and Vulkan in Serbia.
I’m also immensely grateful to all my friends at Education Services Australia—I couldn’t have written this book without your support and encouragement. Thank you especially to my podmates, Alison Laming, Susan Trompenaars, and Jessica Boland, who were there every day, for every step of my writing journey—from the boring stuff to the stressful stuff to the fun and exciting stuff. I appreciate your support so much. Thank you as well to Kelly Nissen and Noni Morrissey (thank you for believing that this was going to happen long before I believed it!). To Emma Durbridge, Madeleine Daniel, Stacey Hattensen, and Tilka Brown, thank you for all the writing chats. To Jill Taylor, thank you for teaching me so much. To Libby Tuckerman, thank you for giving me such flexible work hours—I wouldn’t have been able to finish this book without your support.
Thank you to Naomi Novik for showing me that publishing a book was possible and that maybe I could do it one day too. Naomi, I’ll never forget seeing Temeraire in a bookshop for the first time and thinking, I know the author of that! I know someone who wrote a book! Thank you for all your help and enthusiasm over the years. Thank you too to Francesca Coppa and Gina Paterson for teaching me so much about writing. I still use those lessons in everything I write. Thank you to Zen Cho for being a sounding board for last-minute peace-of-mind checks. And thank you to Diana Fox for fixing the beginning of the book. You were 100 percent right about the solution.
To Warren Leonard, thank you for understanding the book so completely and for getting to know it inside out—as well as I do. All your fantastic questions pinpointed plot holes and helped me to resolve and strengthen the worldbuilding and the backstory.
To Liana Skrzypczak and Bec Miller, thank you for our many wonderful writing sessions and chats on all those weekends.
To the lovely and talented Pandas writing group—Elaine Cuyegkeng, Kat Clay, Aidan Doyle, Likhain, Emma Osborne, Sophie Yorkston, and Suzanne Willis—thank you for the dinners and crits.
To Alex Hong (I miss your writing!) and Melissa Siah, thank you for keeping me company in my research by going on the Lost Palace tour with me on a drizzly London evening.
To the Friends of Holland Park, thank you for taking the time to give me a wonderful tour of Holland House and Holland Park.
To Sarah Rees Brennan, thank you so much for all your encouragement. Eliza Tiernan, thank you for the support when I was on submission (and the genius donut strategy). Amie Kaufman, Jay Kristoff, and Astrid Scholte, thank you for generously sharing your knowledge and experience with a debut. I appreciate it so much. Tashie Bhuiyan, thank you for being an encouraging and welcoming face after my book deal was announced.
To the Clarion 2015 instructors and administrators: Chris Barzak, Saladin Ahmed, Jim Kelly, Karen Joy Fowler, Margo Lanagan, Maureen McHugh, and Shelley Streeby. I learned so much from you in those amazing six weeks. I wish I could do it all over again.
To the Life at Springfield writing workshop (Kinchem Hegedus, instructors Karen Joy Fowler and Nike Sulway, and all the participants): thank you for reading an early version of the prologue and chapter one and providing great feedback.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which I wrote much of this book, and to pay my respect to their Elders, past, present, and emerging: the Bunurong and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Vanessa Len is an Australian author of Chinese-Malaysian and Maltese heritage. An educational editor, she has worked on everything from language learning programs to STEM resources, to professional learning for teachers. Vanessa is a graduate of the Clarion Workshop in San Diego, and she lives in Melbourne.