MY BIGGEST THANK-YOU GOES TO MY EDITORS AT HarperTeen: Chris Hernandez and Tara Weikum. You saw the story when it was just an idea and grilled me (necessarily) about the details until it was actually worth writing. After that, you shepherded my wild imaginings into something that actually made sense. You both know how to push my buttons in the very best of ways.
Much thanks to the lovely Stacy Glick for ensuring that Dreamfall followed its predecessors into the hallowed halls of HarperTeen.
Thank you to Jenna Stempel for giving my book its spine-chilling cover, and to Alexandra Rakaczki and Janet Robbins Rosenberg for transforming my grammar from spine-chilling to presentable.
Thank you to my assistant, Kayla, for being my second brain, and for always being willing to do tasks that aren’t in your job description. Like pushing me in a wheelchair past the Mona Lisa.
Merci to Lenore Appelhans and Claudia Depkin for beta-reading the manuscript and giving much-appreciated reassurance and feedback. Lenore said it bugged the hell out of her not to know if Jaime was a boy or a girl, which reassured me I was doing the right thing. Thank you to the Bear for indulging me repeatedly with the craziest of brainstorming sessions.
Thank you to my friends for your encouragement and cheerleading during the planning and writing of Dreamfall, including Lawrence Daly, Lori Ann Stephens, Diana Canfield, Alex Goddard, Mags Harnett, Cassi Bryn-Michalik, Marie Cambolieu, Carina Rozenfeld, Christi Daugherty, Jack Jewers, Elizabeth Fordham, and Celeste Rhoads.
Some friends were generous enough to open up their private lives for the benefit of my little horror story. Thanks to Penny Russel Janiak for explaining her experience with hypnagogic hallucinations. Also much gratitude to my author friend Bethany Hagen, who not only talked with me in-depth about narcolepsy, but let me use her scariest hallucination in the book. (The clown that kneels on Fergus’s chest and rips off his face.) I hope it makes the dream worthwhile to know it’s now out there, lurking between the pages and scaring readers. Thank you to my friend who underwent electroconvulsive therapy and talked to me in detail about the process and related memory issues.
Thank you, Barbara, for being there for me after Mom died. And for what came after.
Thanks to Dr. Lewis Foss for reading an early version of the book and verifying that my general medical terms and descriptions were accurate enough to be credible. And to the sleep research specialist who prefers to remain anonymous (can you blame him?) for giving me a thumbs-up on the feasibility of Pasithea Facility’s practices and correcting me on the details of my teens’ sleep disorders.
A shout-out to H. P. Lovecraft for inspiring the ambiance of Fergus’s cave dream. I always feel slimy after reading his stories and tried to reproduce the sensation with the phlegm lake.
I owe the flayed-man dream to my sixteen-year-old self, who lay petrified in her bed in the antebellum house hearing the squishy footsteps of the flayed man and thinking, “If only I could write this down, it would be as scary as Stephen King.” Oh, and thank you to Stephen King for giving me my lifelong fear of clowns.
Thank you to Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man and The Martian Chronicles for fitting me with special glasses that allow me to see past the normal world to the creepiness lurking behind. Thank you to Charles Williams for freaking me out with All Hallows’ Eve. Thank you to HBO for screening Alien when I was fourteen and babysitting for the Freemans and was so scared I couldn’t get off the couch and had to call my mom. Thank you to Vincent Price for giving me nightmares for weeks after watching House of Wax. Thank you to the Twilight Zone. Thank you to Mountain Brook Elementary School for screening The Blob late at night so that I had to walk back home in the dark with my sister imagining a huge red snotball oozing after us. Thank you to my pastor for screening A Thief in the Night in the church basement in the 1970s and demonstrating that if you scare a teenager badly enough . . . they still won’t believe what you tell them.
Thank you to my kids for being so scared of weeping angels that I had to put them in Cata’s dream. I also appreciate your suggestions for the nightmares based on your own dreams. Unfortunately, they were too scary to use.
And above all, thank you to my readers for your never-ending enthusiasm for my stories. You inspire me and encourage me to persevere, even when every word seems a struggle. I handed out virtual tissues for the Die For Me series and virtual crossbows for After the End. Now you all deserve a night-light.