Flashback

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank his agent, Richard Curtis; his editor, Reagan Arthur; and his publisher, Michael Pietsch, for understanding what the novel Flashback was really about and for helping him shepherd it to publication. The author acknowledges the unique and important contributions of all three of these good people.

The author would also like to thank Dr. Dan Peterson both for the gift of the Wisdom ballcap—from a bar in Wisdom, Montana, it turns out—which almost certainly added wisdom to the author’s efforts, and for the gift of the various homemade jazz-mix CDs which the author played all during the writing of Flashback. Unbeknownst to most readers, almost every novel has its own secret soundtrack that the author will always associate with the many months of work on a particular book. Dr. Peterson knows the beautiful Flashback soundtrack well because he created it. The author thanks him for that and doffs his Wisdom cap in Dr. Dan’s direction.

The author would like to thank Deborah Jacobs both for her outstanding level of effort, professional expertise, and insight in copyediting the manuscript of Flashback and for suggesting the Proust epigraph that was perfect for this book. The author and Marcel P. both bow to her in sincere gratitude.

Finally, the author needs to acknowledge and thank his wife, Karen, who was always there with the calm insight, important suggestions, and quiet confidence that have helped steer this author through twenty-eight published books. The author also wishes to acknowledge his daughter, Jane, whose energy and joy during the hard writing period for Flashback helped make the seemingly impossible more than possible. The author thanks his wife and daughter for being the fixed stars for him to steer by in a rich and beautiful and otherwise ever-changing Hawaiian night sky.