I’ve been lucky to be surrounded by a wealth of lovely and supportive people who’ve helped me turn a crazy idea into the book you’re holding now.
My deepest gratitude goes to my agent, Jill Grinberg. It’s impossible to express how lucky and honored I feel to be represented by such a rock star. I’m also grateful to the rest of my agency team, Cheryl Pientka and Katelyn Detweiler, for all their work, dedication, and enthusiasm.
So many fathomless thanks go to my editor, Liz Szabla, my publisher, Jean Feiwel, and everyone at Feiwel and Friends. The excitement they’ve shown for Cinder has been truly mind-boggling. I couldn’t have asked for a more amazing group of advocates.
Thanks are due to my online friends, fellow bloggers, and Sailor Moon fandom geeks, who’ve encouraged me every step of the way. In particular, I’d like to thank my early readers for offering input, suggestions, critiques, honesty, support, and the occasional fangirling: Whitney Faulconer, Tamara Felsinger, Jennifer Johnson, Rebecca Kihara, and Meghan Stone-Burgess. Also, thanks to the Circlet critique group for helping me tweak that so-important first chapter into submission, including Naomi Boyd, Dominique Samantha Dulay, Jelena Radosavljevic, and Steve Tara.
I want to send a particularly gigantic thank you to Gina Araner and Jennifer S. De Mello, Ph.D., for helping with my questions on genetics, mutations, and bioelectricity, and filling my head with all sorts of useful vocabulary. I’m also immensely grateful to Paul Manfredi, Ph.D., for his assistance with Chinese honorifics.
Of course, none of this would have been possible without the constant support from my closest friends and family. Mom and Dad, thanks for letting me have all those books when I was growing up, and for letting me sit on the computer and write silly stories during summer vacations when I probably should have been pulling weeds. Big brother Jeff, thanks for a healthy obsession with Star Wars. Sister-in-law Wendy, thanks for appreciating my snark when no one else does. Cousin Lucy, thank you for being a fellow book lover, and for all the wine. Uncle Bob, thanks for taking me and a VW Bug full of teenage girls to anime conventions and instilling in me a hearty respect for cosplay. Best friends Leilani Adams and Angela Yohn, thank you for all the coffee and gossip—, I mean, work-dates.
Finally, thanks to my fiancé, Jesse—who will be my husband by the time he reads this—for bringing me coffee in bed every morning, for telling me to go back to my office when I hadn’t hit my daily word quota, and, mostly, for believing in me. I think it’s safe for you to read it now.