A Song for a New Day

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The funny thing about having my first novel arrive on the heels of my first collection is that I got to do a lifetime’s worth of thanking six months ago, and I’ll probably have amassed another lifetime’s worth in this chaotic year, but I’m writing this in the limbo in between. Even so, it’s inevitable that I’m going to forget someone. This is an apology in advance, and an acknowledgment that it’s absolutely impossible to thank by name everyone who had a hand in making this book happen. That said, here goes:

Thank you first and foremost to Zu for understanding why I need to do this and for making it easier, and for being the best person I know.

My agent, Kim-Mei Kirtland, is smart and wise and willing to answer even my most ridiculous questions. My hugest thanks to her and Megan Gelement and everyone else at HMLA.

I want to thank my editor, Rebecca Brewer, for believing in this book, and for having a clear vision of how to make it better. Also huge thanks to Megha Jain, Alexis Nixon, Tara O’Connor, Jessica Plummer, Sheila Moody, Miranda Hill, Jason Booher for the cool cover, and the rest of the team at Ace and Berkley.

Thank you to LJ Cohen, Donna Buckles, Kelly Robson, Amira Pinsker, Ellie Pinsker, and Marlee Pinsker for reading the first draft and giving excellent feedback, and then sometimes later drafts and random panicked questions along the way, and to Rep Pickard and Sherry Audette Morrow for reading various chapters at various times. Thanks to my writing buddy Kellan Szpara for not only keeping me company, but also for reading at least two drafts and helping me wrap my head around edits.

I want to thank Sheila Williams (and Emily Hockaday!) at Asimov’s for buying and editing my novelette Our Lady of the Open Road, which features Luce at another point in her life. This novel wouldn’t exist without that story, and that story always wanted to be an Asimov’s story.

Thank you to the Red Canoe (Josie, Tina, Matt, and everyone else) for letting me write the entire first draft at their family table. Actually, I wrote the original story there, too.

Thank you to my father, to Esther, to Milton, to the Tudhopes, to the Verskins, to my mother and sisters and cousins and aunts and uncles and siblings-in-law and nieces and nephew, for your unwavering support and enthusiasm. I love you all very much.

Thank you again to my critique partners and workshop buddies and retreat hosts and Slacks and SFWA, and all the blurbers and everyone else in this amazing community. I absolutely adore the writing community I’ve found, both locally in Baltimore and around the world. Thank you all, individually and as a group, for your friendship and support. You inspire me.

Lastly, stories and music work on similar magic. This book wouldn’t exist without music and the music community, even though I’ve been neglecting that side of things of late. Thank you to SONiA for being the first person to take me out on the road and show me how to live a principled life in music, and to her band disappear fear for teaching me how to always have a clean towel on the road. Thank you to John Seay and to my band-brothers in the Stalking Horses, Jes Welter, Chris Plummer, and Tony Calato, for every wonderful show. Thank you to every band I ever shared a stage or a circle with, and to every musician who ever stepped onstage and mesmerized me, some of whom have tributes hidden in this book. (Apologies to Rahne Alexander & the Degenerettes for titling a chapter after the song “Baltimore” and thus ensuring they have no idea it was meant for them.) I know this might seem like it belongs in my album liner notes instead of my novel, but not a single word of this book would have been possible without all those people and the songs they set loose in the world.