Girl Who Never Was Page 22

  All of the people who have been a part of this book are so much more difficult for me to write about, which is why it’s taken me a full paragraph to get to them. Of all the words I’ve ever written, these are the ones that seem least capable of capturing the true depth of emotion I want to convey. I have decided that maybe all I can say is Thank you and hope that everyone listed here understands how wholly inadequate the words are. So:

  Thank you, first, to my fantastic agent Andrea Somberg, whose enthusiasm for the book gave it life.

  Thank you also to my delightful editor Aubrey Poole, whose particular brand of magic made the book better, and better again, and then impossibly still better!

  Thank you to the entire team at Sourcebooks, especially Jillian Bergsma, Cat Clyne, Kay Mitchell, Katherine Prosswimmer, and Derry Wilkens.

  Thank you to all of the friends who have read my writing over the years, listened understandingly to my venting, and cheered me on, including Hillard Bowe, Jean Bowe, Joanne Bush, Erin McCormick, Bill Mullally, Colleen Mullally, Chrystie Perry, Stephanie Pina, Laura Randall, and Kelley Walsh.

  Thank you to everyone on the Internet—you know who you are—who has made me a better and much more thoughtful writer and has reminded me of the true rewards of writing at times when I needed it, including a special shout-out to Jennifer Roberson, who forced me to up my game.

  Thank you to Claudia Gray, who has the distinction of having taken me for my first drink to celebrate my agent and my first drink to celebrate my book deal! It’s a very good thing to have a guide in all this!

  Thank you to David Hosp, who was another guide in all this, and whose tales of novel-writing during commutes were a source of inspiration for me to get this novel done. And who also, incidentally, still wins the award for Single Nicest E-mail I’ve Ever Received About My Writing (although I admit it’s a close race and there are many, many runners-up).

  Thank you to David Kowalczyk and his students, who provided invaluable feedback.

  Thank you to Heather Wilson and everyone else who was an early reader of the book, whose words of encouragement, support, and advice were more important than can be said.

  Thank you to Jennifer Mendola, whose Ben-for-Benedict- not-Benjamin inspired the idea of my Ben-for-Benedict- not-Benjamin.

  Thank you to Kristin Gillespie, who was always excellent at asking just the right question to flush out the rest of the plot.

  Thank you to Noel Wiedner, whose writing I genuinely admire and desire to emulate more than I think she realizes. Noel also deserves a special mention for being so incredibly selfless and giving whenever I have fretted over anything. She also drew several beautiful sketches for me. Yes, she draws too! Such is the extent of her talent!

  Thank you to Larry Stritof, who puts up with an incredible amount of whining from me but nevertheless agreed to provide really excellent tech assistance, website building, and author photography. (Actually, maybe he agreed to do that because of the whining, not in spite of it.)

  And while I’m on the topic of author photographs, thank you to George and Susan DoCanto for the gift of the pink coat, Helen Lantagne for doing hair, Caitlin Cabral for doing make-up and tagging along for the shoot even when she felt ill, Sonja L. Cohen for location suggestions, and Dunkin’ Donuts for fueling the whole thing with its maple-frosted donuts. All of you made me feel like a celebrity! Okay, maybe Dunkin’ Donuts didn’t have much to do with that, but the rest of you did!

  Speaking of Sonja: thank you to Sonja L. Cohen, who was this book’s first editor and whose input at every step along the long and winding road here, whether it be swooning over Ben or reading fresh drafts while on vacation in Prague, has been vitally important. If you can, I highly recommend you find a friend who loves your book as much as you do. She has known, all along, just when and how to nudge me along and when to remind me to take a breath, usually with a glass of Prosecco and a hot British actor (on DVD, not in real life; her powers have some limits). Oddly, when thinking about the acknowledgments section of this book, the anecdote that I kept thinking of to explain Sonja’s value has been this one: once I was eating dip at a party, and I said I was only going to have one more bite so as not to ruin my appetite for dinner, and she said, “You’ll want to make sure it’s a bite with a black olive in it.” And she was right, of course, because black olives are the best.

  Last but not least, thank you an incredible amount to my family. Selkie doesn’t have the biggest family, or the sanest one, and in that respect she doesn’t resemble me at all, because I have been blessed with the world’s best family (and they are even mostly sane!). My family is large and extended and far-flung, and I love and thank all of them for everything, big and small, and they know who they are and how much they mean to me, especially Ma, and Jordan, my only nephew so far and therefore also, as of this writing, my favorite nephew. Some cherished family members have also been lost along the way, but I continue to feel their support and am so grateful to have had them in my life. I also offer a thank-you here to the rest of my Rhode Island “family,” who may not be genetically related but are nonetheless family.

  I must provide a special extended note of thanks to my parents and sisters. They have supported me in every crazy thing I’ve ever done, even the ideas I have that I know make them shake their heads and wonder where I came from. Perhaps more importantly though, they make me laugh, harder than anyone else in the universe, and in the end, that’s what life should be about. This planet is a crazy place full of crazy people. Some of them I write about. The rest of them I talk to my family about, in giddy, hilarious, confusing conversations without equal, and I honestly have no idea what I would do without them. People ask me if I write about my family, and the truth is that I don’t really, because I’m not sure anyone would believe me if I did; they are too amazing and fantastic. So Mom, Dad, Meg, Cait: Thank you for making me laugh, for loving me, for making sure I know I’m loved, for always being my home, through good times and bad. The world can be a big and lonely place. You may not be ogres or faeries, but you are magical in that you keep my world crowded with love and laughter and delight and happiness. You have made my life bright, exciting, unpredictable—as we would say, never a dull moment! And I genuinely would never want it to be any other way. You are the greatest gifts, and I am the luckiest person. We end every telephone conversation with “I love you,” and I want, with these acknowledgments, to make sure you know how much I mean it every time I say it: I love you. And thank you.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Skylar Dorset grew up in Rhode Island, so she hates to drive more than twenty minutes to get anywhere. After receiving a law degree from Harvard, Skylar was an attorney in Boston for many years, where she wrote much of her first book during bouts of being stuck on the subway. Visit her at www.skylardorset.com.