The Corporation

Acknowledgements

Much of this novel was written while I was working a full-time job in the IT world as a Web Designer/Technical Writer/Database Administrator, but I drew on my entire past employment in the corporate world for much of it’s background. I’d like to take the time now to thank some of those people who were instrumental in its support and development.

My thanks to Larry Roberts for publishing this novel in its original limited edition; my thanks also go to Gilbert Schloss, Don D’Auria, and Shane Ryan Staley who provided support by buying (and publishing) other projects during the stages The Corporation went through numerous drafts. Steve Calcutt gets credit for repping me during this period. Special acknowledgement must be made to Julia Atkins, who provided the cover illustration for this new edition and provided much-needed assistance on the overall cover design. Special thanks to Mike Lombardo for providing the introduction.

Dori Miller gets credit for helping me with research and for sharing her own corporate horror stories from her years in the trenches. She also provided pre-reader feedback on an early draft of this bad boy, along with Todd Clark, Bob Strauss, and Jamie LaChance.

Brian and Cassi Keene, Bob Ford, David Nordhaus, Gord Rollo, Gene O’Neill, Jamie LaChance, Todd Clark, Bob Strauss, Gary Zimmerman, Dori, Michael Laimo, Geoff Cooper, and Ken Atkins provided safe havens from the madness of both this novel and the corporate world.

Ramona Pearce, Salpy Manjikian, Matt Thompson, Ken Atkins, Jeremiah Brown, and Bob “Isn’t That Neat!” Fegley, were like-minded allies in the corporate worlds that inspired much of this novel.

Cathy and Hannah Gonzalez get their own paragraph because they deserve it.

While this novel is completely fictitious and my original intention in writing it was to provide hours of bizarre and (I hope) suspenseful entertainment, I could not help but be drawn to some of the underlying themes that crept into the narrative. For a look at the truly scary, I direct you to the Mark Achbar/Jennifer Abbott documentary film The Corporation (2003), or the Human Resources Department of any large corporation.