The Necromancer's House (39 page)

I hope my agent, Michelle Brower, isn't getting tired of my sincere thanks, but she earns them again and again with her advocacy, positivity, and good counsel. I am also grateful to Sean Daily at Hotchkiss and Associates for fielding endless naïve questions about the film and television industry, and to Tom Colgan, editor and friend, for his faith in me. His assistant, Amanda Ng, is so competent, professional, and effective as to be almost invisible; but I conjure her to thank her here. Na
omi Kashinsky and her father, Alan, were invaluable to my Russian research, as was Ambassador Robert Patterson, who was in Moscow around the time our protagonist would have visited that city on his way to a very poor foreign travel experience indeed. Captain K. R. Kollman, USMM, was in the right place at the right time to assist me with questions about Coast Guard procedure. Steve Townsend was my chief Enon resource. My good friend Eric Brown, poet, father, musician, and the unofficial Mayor of Yellow Springs, Ohio, makes a cameo here; thanks to him, as well as to Dino for use of his bathroom. Cookie and Gene Schoonmaker-Franczec shared their Sterling, New York, home and stories with me; Cookie's studio served as the model for Anneke's, but I'm pretty sure all similarities between them end there. Thanks to readers/listeners/supporters Kelly Cochran Davis, Patrick Johnson, Dan Fox, Ciara Carinci, Angela Valdes, Cyrus Rua, and Elona Dunn, but especially to Jennifer Schlitt and Noelle Burk, whose early enthusiasm for this story affected its trajectory in all the best ways.

A special thank-you to director Gary Izzo, who has been quietly pursuing comedic and artistic excellence in the woods of Cayuga County, New York, for more than thirty years now; had he not first cast me as a Bless the Mark player at the Sterling Renaissance Festival in 1992 (and many times since), I never would have come to the beautiful hills, cliffs, and farmland that compose West Central New York, I never would have joined the strange and wonderful tribe that gave me so many enduring friendships, and you would not be holding this book.

Finally, thanks to the Burly Minstrel, Jim Hancock, whose ready guitar and mellow voice provided the soundtrack to a great many heartbreakingly beautiful sunsets on the very same McIntyre Bluffs that figure in this story.

I am blessed in my associations.