The Hacienda(98)

I owe my littermates the world for literal decades of untangling outlines, filling in plot holes, shaping character backstories, and pointing out underlying themes that I would not have realized otherwise. Thank you, Aurora, for being my first ever first reader, but especially for suffering my cringe-worthy juvenilia. Special thanks to Honore, valued violence adviser, for helping me kill characters with (enough) medical accuracy and bloody aplomb. To Pollisimo, for safeguarding my beloved baby brother and teaching us the meaning of super spook. And dear J: pew pew pew u r my sister too.

I thank my mother for raising me hard-working and definitely too daydreamy, but especially for listening when I begged to be taken out of public school. For cultivating a freewheeling homeschool education where we ran barefoot through books, where I had the space to read, dream, and most importantly, to write. I love you.

Last but certainly not least, I thank the man who holds my hand through every meltdown and every victory, who has taught me the compassion and patience that makes me the writer I am and the writer I will become: Robert, I could not have done this without you.





ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Isabel Ca?as is a Mexican-American speculative fiction writer. After having lived in Mexico, Scotland, Egypt, and Turkey, among other places, she has settled (for now) in New York City, where she works on her PhD dissertation in medieval Islamic literature and writes fiction inspired by her research and her heritage.