Spindle Fire (Spindle Fire #1)(83)

I too received an abundance of gifts as I worked on this book, in the form of emotional and creative support. I want to thank Lauren Oliver, who told me that moving through a novel is like skating across a frozen lake, finding the right places to shatter the ice and plunge in. Thanks also to Kamilla Benko, for many inspirations (nuns can be cool!), and Tara Sonin—if I could tithe her romantic instincts, I would!

As always, I owe very much to the wisdom of my editor, Rosemary Brosnan, who urged me to think critically about every single sentence in this novel, and to my amazing agent, Stephen Barbara, a true partner in my career, who has championed my foray into fantasy writing—and loved many of those epic digressions I ended up cutting.

Thank you to Lyndsey Blessing, Alexis Hurley, and the entire team at Inkwell Management for sending Spindle Fire on its own voyage across the sea, and thank you to all the incredibly talented people at HarperTeen who’ve been behind this book from the start, especially Kate Jackson, Jessica MacLeish, Courtney Stevenson, Olivia Russo, and Kate Klimowicz. And thank you to Lisa Perrin for cover art that takes my breath away.

I certainly could not have written this novel with any sort of confidence had it not been for the fantastic notes from my beta readers, Marie Villaneda and Christopher Avila, from the Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, who offered wonderful advice about the character of Isabelle and how she might manage her wild journey.

I’m grateful to Jess Rothenberg, Rebecca Serle, and Leila Sales for the many hours of companionship and encouragement while I researched things like medieval convent layouts, narwhal hunting, and plague masks—or pondered what the underbelly of a dove looks like. And, of course, to my husband, Charlie, who spent many of those hours with our newborn daughter so that I could be alone with Isbe and Aurora and this crazy cast of cracked-up faeries—tracing a lifeline back to myself, even through the darkest, sleepless phases of early motherhood.

Finally: thank you, Minna, princess of the woodland creatures, my hedgehog, my beauty, my love.