Happy Birthday, new book.  It’s been a long time now that I’ve been home from Japan, but when I dip my head back into the pages of this book that I wrote there, it all comes back again.

I’ve heard it noted in the acknowledgements pages of many books, as well as in passing conversation, that writers always forget to thank someone in their books, and while I feel pretty good about the acknowledgements in my first novel, I have found that I’ve forgotten to thank a few really important folks in this second one.  Remembered too late. 

Thank you, Susan Groppi and Karen Meisner, for the most wonderful Christmas package I’ve ever received from anyone.  I’d been missing home by that point for a while, and all the stuff you sent allowed me to pretend I was home for the Christmas season, at least.

And thank you to the Speculative Literature Foundation, who awarded me a travel grant to visit Kyoto for some research on the place for a section of this book.  

I hope a belated thanks here instead will make up for a little bit of my forgetfulness.