God's War

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wrote most of this book during the year I was dying.

I’m dying a lot less quickly these days, but neither I nor the book would be here without the support of a small army of folks who saw me through that year and beyond.

Big thanks to my first readers: Patrick Weekes, Julian Brown, Miriam Hurst, and David Moles. Finding good first readers can take a lifetime, and this bunch are among the best you’ll ever dig up. I can always count on them to call me on my bullshit. I hope they’ll continue to stick with me, even if sometimes I ignore them and leave in all my bullshit.

Special thanks to Jennifer Whitson. Though we’re no longer friends, I wouldn’t be writing this today without her love, enthusiasm, energetic support, and a particularly expedient 911 call.

This book also would not exist without the friendship, encouragement, financial advice, and ass-kicking of my adopted family, Stephanie and Ian Barney. They have saved me in every way a person can be saved.

But just creating a book and getting up after a knockout doesn’t get the book to print. For that, I have my tireless agent, Jennifer Jackson, to thank. She dusted off the book after round one and passed it into round two with all the professional aplomb of the best boxing manager. Thanks also to my purchasing editor, Jeremy Lassen, and the posse at Night Shade Books. Both Jennifer and Jeremy took a big gamble on a bloody little book.

Hats off as well to all of the editors who had a hand in this book along the way, including Juliet Ulman, David Pomerico, and copyeditors K.M. Lord and Marty Halpern. Special thanks also to David Marusek, Colleen Lindsay, Greg Beatty, Jeremy Tolbert, Tim Pratt, Geoff Ryman, Shana Cohen, Kaitlin Heller, and the generous-and-always-inspiring Jeff VanderMeer for various and sundry professional advice, shouts-outs, and writing opportunities that have sustained me over the last ten years.

Many thanks to my friends and family for their financial and emotional support. My Clarion experience and Master’s work at the University of Kwazulu Natal in Durban, South Africa was made possible in large part by the generous contributions of Roger Becker, Edward Becker, and Ernie Rogers. Additional contributions were also made by Steve and Kris Becker, Annie Hurley, Jeanne Mack, and Jacqueline Hurley (Je t’aime grand-mère). It takes a village.

To Jayson Utz, who stumbled into this whole process mid-fight, thank you for supporting me during many long nights of uninterrupted writing time when we’d both rather be doing something else. Thank you for the incredible patience, fortitude, strength, and love you have generously shared with me during our partnership.

Finally, many thanks to my long-suffering parents, Terri and Jack Hurley, who told me—back in the hazy 80’s—that they would be happy to encourage their dorky kid’s writing career, so long as I knew I’d always be poor.

Over the years, I found out that poverty wasn’t such a catastrophe. The real tragedy would have been dying before I’d ever published a book.

There are some things worth coming back for.

St. Anne’s Hill

Dayton, Ohio

Fall 2010