Until the Beginning (24 page)

THIS BOOK WAS NOT CONCEIVED IN A VOID. MY
own childhood provided me with a fierce will to survive and a need to search for my own path to truth. Although I didn’t have Miles, Poe, and the Yara to accompany me on that path, there were others who helped me along my way: Madeleine L’Engle, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, C.S. Lewis, Ursula Le Guin, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mark Helprin, Charles Williams, Ray Bradbury, Walker Percy, George MacDonald, Anne McCaffrey, and a host of others. These individuals helped me escape my internal world and learn to see the one outside me through different eyes. They saved me. Books saved me. Story saved me.

As for bringing the story of another survivor and truth-seeker to the page, I want to thank Tara Weikum and Christopher Hernandez for helping me organize my thoughts on Juneau, and
prodding me about the ideas that weren’t quite true until I took them further. Thank you for your guidance and wise advice.

Once again, thank you to my agent, Stacey Glick, for finding the perfect home for Juneau and Miles.

My friend and beta reader Claudia Depkin had the patience and grace to read the story chunk by chunk as I churned it out, and then read it all over again . . . several times. Thank you for your encouragement and feedback, Claudia. Gratitude as well to fellow writer and wereboar sister Anna Carey for reading, reassuring, and advising.

Thank you to my assistant, Alana, for all of her help in organizing me, proofreading, coming up with discussion group questions, and all of the other tasks I set for her. I forgive you for leaving me for university, and have no doubt you have a very bright future, whether in books, physics, or whatever else you put your mind to.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to
Until the Beginning
’s final package. Copyeditors Melinda Weigel, Alexandra Alexo, and Anne Heausler helped clean things up inside, while the outside was treated with grandeur and beauty by Jenna Stempel, Alison Donalty, and Craig Shields.

There were several batcaves used in the making of
Until the Beginning
: besides my regular haunt in Paris was a brownstone in Brooklyn with Lisa Steiner; a cozy flat on the Isle of Bute, Scotland, with Lisa O’Donnell; a home in the desert in Lake Havasu, Arizona, with my cousin Diana Canfield; and a convent-school-turned-artist-retreat near Reims, France, the Performing Arts
Forum, run by the indefatigable Jan Ritsema. It seems that one must travel in order to create a road-trip book.

Finally, and most important, I want to thank my readers for loving my stories and for telling me so. Your enthusiasm and support means everything to me.

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Photo by Louis Fabries

AMY PLUM
is the international bestselling author of
After the End
and the Die for Me series. She spent her childhood in Birmingham, Alabama, her twenties in Chicago and Paris, and several more years in London, New York, and the Loire Valley. Now she lives in Paris and swears she’ll never move again. You can visit Amy online at
www.amyplumbooks.com
.

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