The Art of Gratitude

(E________, first draft: 13,600 words)

When the good folks at DAW sent me the copy-edited version of Braking Day, it contained detailed instructions on how to review, so that if the copyeditor’s suggested amendments conflicted with my preferences, I could change them in such a way that the final version actually reflects my wishes.  So focused was I on following DAW’s granular guidance on editing the copyedit, I almost missed the following.

“If you would like to have a dedication and/or acknowledgments page in this book, or any other front or back matter, please send those to me at the same time as the reviewed manuscript.”

Yikes!  I hadn’t even thought about this.  I am not the sort of person who even thinks to send out thank-you notes (though I am always tickled pink when I receive one), so expressing gratitude in written form is not one of my strengths.  Although the principal reason for this failure is congenital bone idleness, a lesser ground is this: most people will overlook a failure to offer written thanks.  They will not, however, forgive a written thank-you to a third party when they themselves have been left out.  Acknowledgments are a social minefield.  One false step and you are dead to someone.

Being a man of immense bravery, my immediate reaction was to duck the whole issue and not write one, like C.J. Cherryh and Jane S. Fancher in Alliance Rising, or maybe do something super-short and high level like Martha Wells in Network Effect (I worship at the altar of Murderbot!) but these are all established writers who can get away with that sort of thing.  Mine is a traditionally published debut novel.  And I am incredibly lucky to be in a position to write the previous sentence.  It really does feel like winning the lottery and it would be churlish in the extreme to not at least try to thank the many, many people who have helped make that happen.  So, if you get to the acknowledgment page, and I have forgotten to mention you, I am really, really, really sorry.  Braking Day went through eight rounds of edits.  I only had one shot at the acknowledgment.

I don’t want to be dead to you.