The War of the Flowers

DAW Books, Inc.

DAW Book Collectors No. 1225.

Microsoft LIT edition ISBN: 0-7420-9316-6

Adobe PDF edition ISBN: 0-7420-9318-2

Palm PDB edition ISBN: 0-7420-9319-0

MobiPocket edition ISBN: 0-7420-9317-

This book is dedicated with great love to my wife, Deborah Beale, who makes my life worth living in more ways than I can count, let alone list here.

A good marriage and a loving family may not be the easiest things in the world to create, but I find it hard to believe there is anything more worth the effort. It is a Great Adventure, and I share mine with a wonderful woman.

Deb, you are my personal fairy-tale ending.

This book didn't have quite as many midwives as some of my others, but it still wouldn't have made it into the world without a lot of help.

I have again received support and useful feedback in too many ways to list from my wonderful agent Matt Bialer and my British editor Tim Holman, and my German editor Ulrike Killler. My brilliant wife Deborah Beale as always provided words of wisdom at many stages, both as a reader full of useful comments and because of her literary and publishing acumen. My thanks to all of them — I'm a very lucky writer. And of course, profound gratitude to my most excellent American publishers (and primary editors of this book) Betsy Wollheim and Sheila Gilbert, along with all the folks at DAW Books, for helping me to see another wild idea from conception to its emergence into the world, and for their constant exercise of creative patience. I couldn't do it without them.

Blessings on you all.