Only the Good Die Young

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As always, I want to thank Ginjer Buchanan for believing in me! That also goes for my agent, Pamela Harty, and my critique partners, Sheri Whitefeather and Judy Duarte, plus my family. You guys are all inspirations to me.

And speaking of inspiration, thank you to Deborah J. Ross and Linda Thomas-Sundstrom. As writers, we are often asked how we get book ideas, and the most accurate thing I can come up with is that every story has its genesis, starting with one domino, and then growing stronger as each one connects with the one before, causing others to fall into what becomes a real, live book.

The dominos for this series were set in motion at a lunch during the 2011 World Fantasy Con. A private, profound story from Deborah was the first domino, and it connected to the next one while Linda and I were on our way back to the workshops, exchanging thoughts about what we’d heard from our friend. The next one fell as we moved on to chatting about true crime books, in particular the excellent The Cases That Haunt Us by John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker. I told Linda about the stories in it—profiles of the JonBenét Ramsey, O. J. Simpson, and Jack the Ripper cases, among others—and then Linda referred back to the title of the book. “People like [a certain killer] should be haunted,” she said. Bam! “What if there was a ghost who worked for an agency that tried to scare confessions out of people?” I blurted out. Linda and I laughed, and from that point on, Jensen Murphy started talking to me in her ’eighties, dead-girl, justice-seeking ghost voice.

Lest you think I forgot about my final thank-you (not quite!), much appreciation goes to my readers. You are always there, always supportive, and always awesome. It’s an honor to know you on Facebook and Twitter, and it makes my week when I meet you in person. Hope you enjoy this new series—it’s all yours.