I end up laughing so hard that Caitlin gets out of the car and walks around to my side, opens the door, and pulls me bodily to the passenger side. She serenely ignores the blaring of the horns from the aggravated, psychotic Boston drivers stacked up behind us, walks back to the driver's side and takes the wheel.
"Thanks," I tell her, and lay a hand on her pudgy, freckled arm.
"You belong in a loony bin, you know that?" she says, punching me in the thigh harder than is strictly necessary.
"Oh, I know," I say, and dial up some music on the car stereo.
—
Acknowledgements
This novel was workshopped by the Cecil Street Irregulars, the Novelettes and the Gibraltar Point gang, and received excellent feedback from the first readers on the est-preview list (especially Pat York). Likewise, I'm indebted to all the people who read and commented on this book along the way.
Thanks go to my editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, for reading this so quickly — minutes after I finished it! Likewise to my agent, Don Maass, thank you.
Thanks to Irene Gallo and Shelley Eshkar for knocking *two* out of the park with their cover-designs for my books.
Thanks to my co-editors at Boing Boing and all the collaborators I've written with, who've made me a better writer.