Tim O’Connell said he liked the manuscript a lot but I needed to get a little better at writing before he’d print the thing and he said I’d need to rewrite it again. So I about died. But then I got to rewriting it again. And I was looking at Tim’s edits. And there were some big changes. And I was like, Tim, what about these changes? I dunno. He said, The changes are good. I said, Yeah, well…And it was kind of a thing. And then we all talked on the phone, Matthew and Tim and this lady (Adeline Manson) and I. And they said to the lady, Tell Nico what you told us. And she said, When I read your version I thought the main character was an asshole, and when I read Tim’s version I thought the main character was an asshole but I kind of liked him.
So that settled it. And we finished writing the book after that. And if you’ve read this book and you thought the main character was an asshole but you kind of liked him, that was all because of Tim O’Connell.
Tim and his brilliant assistant, Anna Kaufman, really did work absurdly hard getting this manuscript into shape, and if they hadn’t helped me out so much then you’d have never read this book, and I am very much indebted to them and also to Daniel Novack, who gave me good advice that I was all too glad to take, and to Susan M. S. Brown, who did copyedits for this book and saved me from more than a few errors that would have caused me no end of embarrassment. Any mistakes in the text are mine and I insisted on their being in there.
I was very lucky. I’ve had a lot of help. I should not forget to mention Rosemary Carroll. Rosemary looked over all our contracts and watched out for us whenever we needed watching out for. And in our dark days she assured Matthew that he wasn’t wasting his time on me.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nico Walker is originally from Cleveland. Cherry is his debut novel.