Crimson Death (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #25)(80)
So maybe I owed Disney an apology.
Maybe our Happily Ever After hadn’t worked on the first shot. And maybe Happily Ever Afters weren’t a singular event. Maybe they were something you had to work at, and build, and never give up on, as long as they were something you still wanted.
And, maybe they weren’t perfect. It wasn’t like having Will right here and right now somehow erased all of the terrible things that had happened this year. And it didn’t prevent terrible things from happening in the future. Sometimes in life, terrible things happened. And sometimes really, really amazing things happened. And sometimes, those things all kind of happened at once.
But screw tomorrow.
Even if no one could promise that everything would work out perfectly, right here and now, in this exact moment, it was perfect.
And right here and now was the only thing that ever mattered anyway.
Acknowledgments
This, my second book, is different from my debut novel in a lot of ways. In other ways, it’s similar. The most notable of which being that this book, like my first, didn’t happen by itself. It may take a village to raise a child, but to birth a book baby? That takes multiple friends, family members, publishing professionals, and readers, spanning three continents!
To Moe Ferrara, my agent. For being the first person to get my words, for always being there for emotional support, and for helping me make good books great. I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t met you. Thank you as well to James McGowan and the rest of the Bookends team for their advice and support!
Thank you to Sylvan Creekmore, my super-awesome-amazing editor, who totally got what I was trying to do, remained completely unflappable even when I went into high-anxiety mode ten or twenty times in a row, and who wasn’t afraid to tell me if a joke that was hilarious to me made absolutely no sense. This has been the most amazing experience, and I’m forever grateful to have you as my editor.
To the entire team at Wednesday Books: Good God, you’re all superstars. I wish I had a recording of every time I’ve gushed to a friend about the professionalism, passion, and expertise within the Wednesday Books office. I can’t express how grateful I am to be able to call myself a part of the Wednesday Books family. Every one of you has made this experience everything I could have ever hoped for. Special thanks to DJ DeSmyter, Dana Aprigliano, Alexis Neuville, Jessica Preeg, Sarah Schoof, Sara Goodman, Anne Marie Tallberg, NaNá V. Stoelzle, and Caitlyn Averett!
Thank you to Kerri Resnick, my cover designer, and Jim Tierney, who illustrated. Thank you for giving me a cover that made me cry.
To the earliest readers of Only Mostly Devastated, who responded to my emergency call for a lightning-fast turnaround time to beat the Thanksgiving publishing break; Lee Kelsall, Ash Ledger, Sophie Cameron, Julie Tuovi, and Tere Kirkland. Thank you all for reading this book at its roughest, and for giving me the frank feedback it needed at the time.
To Ash and Julia Lynn Rubin: Our near-daily chats kept me from unspooling. Thank you both for being a safe space to rehash the same conversations over and over and over again when I needed it the most.
Thank you to The Lobster Garden girls Hannah Capin and Bibi Cooper, and to Cass Frances, Sadie Blach, and everyone else who allows me to scream into their Twitter DMs when it’s midday for me and bedtime for them. Love you.
Thank you to my Melbourne writer crew, Katya De Becerra, Ella Dyson, Astrid Scholte, and Claire Donnelly, for always being there for a coffee or stronger beverage, depending on how intense edits were that week.
Special thanks to Sandhya Menon, Angelo Surmelis, Jenn Bennett, Kayla Ancrum, Cale Dietrich, Hannah Capin, and Mason Deaver: Your early support of this book meant the world to me, and I’m still pinching myself that authors as unbelievably talented as yourselves took the time to read the words I wrote.
To Mum, Dad, and Sarah: Thank you for being the best family in the world. For reading to me as a baby, for the library trips, for the encouragement. Shout-out to Mum for letting me hog the dial-up internet so I could publish my fanfiction when you needed to make phone calls, to Dad for reading The Faraway Tree series to me until your throat must have felt raw, and to Sarah for listening to every wild story plot I ever ran by you.
Cameron, thank you for giving me your patience, your silence when I needed it, your support when I needed that, and your ears when I demanded them. Thank you for letting me neglect the dishes when I have deadlines due, and for buying me surprise Nutella when it gets too much for me. Most of all, thank you for making home a safe haven.
To everyone who was on the bus the morning Moe called me to say we had an offer on this book: I’m sorry for startling you. I know that 7:30 A.M. is too loud to start screaming on public transport. I was very excited, and I hope you all forgive me.
And finally, to everyone who ever showed me what a broken heart felt like: What doesn’t kill a writer gives her plenty to write about.