Elise Matthesen, professional muse, provides Aphra’s jewelry.
I have the best beta readers. They provided structural advice so scary and correct that every round of editing involved a large component of just doing more of what they told me to. Lila Wejksnora-Garrott picked up on themes I didn’t even know I had. Kathryn McCulley’s snarky comments made me giggle—a powerful antidote to editing anxiety—and showed me which bits actually worked. Anne M. Pillsworth represented the faction of Lovecraft lovers, reminded me that readers can’t read minds, and helped ensure that deviations from Mythos canon were deliberate. Marissa Lingen spoke for the faction that loves Lovecraft not; she also encouraged me to move romantic relationships out of my head and onto the page. Allen Berman gave all-around useful commentary and represented the faction that doesn’t read Lovecraft at all—feedback well worth printing out the book’s very first hard copy.
Anne is also my Best Co-Blogger on Tor.com’s Lovecraft Reread series. Thanks to her and our community of commenters, I’ve had excellent company in my efforts to assimilate the whole Mythos for easy deconstruction. They are all delightfully cyclopean, perhaps even rugose. There are not enough places, online or otherwise, where one can comfortably critique Lovecraft’s racism, wax enthusiastic over the architecture of Y’ha-nthlei, and geek about historical understanding of plate tectonics—all flame-free.
The problem with historical fantasy is the history—for giving mine some resemblance to actual events and experiences, I’m indebted to many libraries and used bookstores. My reading list was long, but I want to make particular mention of George Takei’s To the Stars. While it’s not exactly a standard historical reference, his child’s-eye-view portrayal of the Japanese American internment, and the community’s postwar recovery, were invaluable touchstones. (While I’m at it, I’ll also thank him for his kindness to an eleven-year-old Trekkie who managed to get the date of the costume contest wrong at her first con—also an important contribution to my writing, in that I stayed with fandom rather than getting scared off.)
My followers on Twitter and Livejournal patiently answered hard-to-look-up questions like “I know people smoked everywhere, but libraries?” and “Even in the rare book room???” The past is another, smellier country. Finally, the docent at the National Japanese American Historical Society in San Francisco’s Nihonmachi provided helpful guidance on postwar cuisine along with a variety of other research materials. All errors—of which I’m sure there are many—are my own.
My parents’ stories of growing up in the ’40s and ’50s helped color Aphra’s world. If I’d known that writing about a gay Jewish New Yorker who works for the government in the ’40s would evoke so many details about my great-uncle Monroe—very clearly a relative of Ron Spector’s—I would have done it a lot sooner.
I hope my in-laws will forgive my borrowing a few names, since I didn’t ask permission. Lovecraft populated the Miskatonic Valley with Uptons; the Skinners and Trumbulls and Crowthers followed naturally. The real ones are all very nice people and none of them are in fact possessed by eldritch abominations.
Householdmates Jamie Anfenson-Comeau, Shelby Anfenson-Comeau, and Nora Temkin provided moral support throughout the writing process, appropriate admiration of cover art, and dramatic exclamations that they “knew me when” every time an author copy appeared in the mail. Bobby, Cordelia, and Miriam do not facilitate the writing process, but do inspire it—and are delightful in many other ways as well.
First and finally, my wife, Sarah, is alpha reader, continuity checker, patient listener to artistic wibbling, seneschal, child minder, epigrammatic problem solver, and source of potent slash goggles. I could not have written this book without her.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
RUTHANNA EMRYS lives in a mysterious manor house on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., with her wife and their large, strange family. She makes homemade vanilla, obsesses about game design, gives unsolicited advice, and occasionally attempts to save the world. Her stories have appeared in a number of venues, including Strange Horizons, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, and Tor.com. Winter Tide is her first novel. You can sign up for email updates here.