Confessions of a Curious Bookseller(93)

Dad and Linda, you have shown me encouragement through the years and have pushed me to keep going, to not lose heart, and to remember what is important. Thanks, Dad, for passing down that Green fighting spirit. It keeps me in the ring.

Huge thanks to the rest of my family, particularly Grandma Connie, who continues with her vivaciousness and love to be a source of inspiration and support.

And for my late Grandma Betty and late Pop-up, who showed enormous love to my sister and me and also let us get away with (almost) anything. Words can’t express how much I miss you.

Thank you to the extremely talented and driven Brian Morgan and Sarah Longhi, and your writers’ retreats. Brian, my chosen brother, you have been one of my greatest champions through the years, and you are a huge reason why any of this has been possible, why I kept going, and why, because of an encouraging word from you, I started in the first place.

A thousand thanks to my early readers for this project and others: Beth Gorman, Brittany Gaines, Liz Ursell, and David Pham. Beth and Brittany, you have been there, without judgment, for all my ups and downs. I don’t know where I’d be without you both.

To Alex Sando and Andrew Feierabend, I love you guys. You have been with me from the beginning as constant friends whom I could always count on and who always encouraged me to keep going. Enormous thanks as well to Katie Simpson, Sebastian G?res, CJ Brooks, and the rest of my hilarious, wonderful, beautiful Philly family. Doobies forever, though Matt would never.

Thank you to the incredibly talented and driven Lisa Conn, Andres Cruciani, Lee Bacon, and Rachel Morgan—may we always cheer each other on.

Also, immense gratitude to my work friends and colleagues who have been incredibly supportive through the years.

Thank you to the University of the Arts for the teachers who enriched my life and pushed me to be a better artist. Endless love and gratitude always to Ernie Losso for being a friend and fostering my writing early on and to the late Jared Martin for his support and encouragement. To Elise Juska and Aimee LaBrie for their wisdom and excellent teaching. Thank you to Emmanuelle Delpech for teaching me to play and create without barriers.

A huge thanks to the New York Pitch Conference and Writer’s Workshop and all the amazing writers and mentors I met there. Our group was a little family by the time it was done and, though we are scattered across the world now, I think of you often and am grateful for your support and feedback.

To my entire aikido family, you have been vital in keeping me going, especially during the harder times. Even a small word of encouragement to a writer is huge, and you all delivered and then some. I can’t express enough how much it means to me.

Ed Shockley, who walks in both the aikido and writer world, thank you for everything.

Last but not least, Matt Johnston, more than anyone you know the journey I’ve taken with this book. You have been there with me fighting for years, celebrating my accomplishments, and sticking with me through the darkest of times. You always believed in me, even when I didn’t believe in myself. Thank you for your tough love, for our long conversations about writing, and for being someone I could turn to when I needed a critical eye. May we always be there for each other. As Tim Canterbury wrote to Dawn Tinsley: “Never give up.”