Also thank my friend Chuck Verrill, who edited the book and hung with me every step of the way. His encouragement and help were invaluable, as was the encouragement of Elaine Koster, who has published all of these cowboy romances in paperback.
Most thanks of all go to my wife, who supports me in this madness as best she can and helped me on this book in a way she doesn't even know. Once, in a dark time, she gave me a funny little rubber figure that made me smile. It's Rocket J. Squirrel, wearing his blue aviator's hat and with his arms bravely outstretched. I put that figure on my manuscript as it grew (and grew ... and grew), hoping some of the love that came with it would kind of fertilize the work. It must have worked, at least to a degree; the book is here, after all. I don't know if it's good or bad - I lost all sense of perspective around page four hundred - but it's here. That alone seems like a miracle. And I have started to believe I might actually live to complete this cycle of stories. (Knock on wood.)
There are three more to be told, I think, two set chiefly in Mid-World and one almost entirely in our world - that's the one dealing with the vacant lot on the comer of Second and Forty-sixth, and the rose that grows there. That rose, I must tell you, is in terrible danger.
In the end; Roland's ka-tet will come to the nightscape which is Thunderclap . . . and to what lies beyond it. All may not live to reach the Tower, but I believe that those who do reach it will stand and be true.
- Stephen King
Lovell, Maine, October 27, 1996