The Owl & Moon Cafe: A Novel (No Series) (43 page)

I chose to write about the subject of medical marijuana purely out of interest in the complexity of the issues, not to condone drug use, or to use my fiction as a platform. Exploring marijuana fictionally offered me new ways to think about medicine and illness, two subjects that remain fascinating to me.
The Owl & Moon Café
is a story about people, plain and simple, and the everyday trials they experience when illness visits their world. I write this note so my mother won’t worry.

Marysue Rucci’s wisdom, honesty, and generous spirit helped me to locate the novel that lay hidden in my rocky first (and second) draft. I cannot thank her enough for reminding me that every book, be it my first or my ninth, is different from the one before it, and must be approached with humility and respect. I hope we will continue to make many more books together. Thanks too to her assistant, Alexis Taines.

Deborah Schneider, longtime agent and friend, and fellow sight hound enthusiast, remains my pillar of strength, my cold drink of water, my heart’s dear friend, my work’s fiercest champion, and she is always, always there for me when I need her. Her assistants, Cathy Gleason and Britt Carlson, are continually kind and ever helpful, as well.

Thank you, David Rosenthal and Simon & Schuster, for believing in my writing and continuing to publish me in a time when the industry is tentative.

Major blessings on Pam Cravez, an old soul with a wise eye, for her willingness to read, comment on, and help edit this manuscript. I wouldn’t have made it without her.

To Isolde Sauer and Jane Herman, my production editor and copyeditor, thank you for your hard work—any mistakes are mine.

Friend and fellow writer on planet earth Earlene Fowler has gotten me through many hard times, and is a superlative human being I love with all my heart. Sherry Simpson, words fail. Thanks for being my friend. Judi Hendricks and Jodi Picoult, thanks for your abiding friendship and support. Erica Baird turned my office from a total heap into impeccable order, and I still can’t figure out how. Erica, I’ve a feeling that in no time at all your books will be in print. Cat Whitney, house-sitting the Insane Clown Posse is above and beyond the call of friendship. Money will never be enough to demonstrate my gratitude. To the Whine and Dine girls: Jacqui Carr, Ellen Cole, Deborah Fink, and JoAnn Asher, thank you for putting up with my moods when I am remote and strange, which is unfortunately a lot of the time.

This book found its center when I passed by two sociology students selling old textbooks in the Social Sciences Building. Returning to Carl Sagan’s words reminded me just how much undiscovered magic still exists. I pray he is up there in the celestial canopy enjoying his reward, and I also hope he knows that it’s perfectly possible for a young girl to fall in love with him, even an old girl, too.

To my mom, Mary; my sisters, Lee and Carol; my brothers, Jim and John—thank you for letting me borrow from your lives to inspire my fiction. To my son, Jack, and his lovely wife, Olivia, I couldn’t write a word without your abiding love and frequent laughter. To my doggies, Echo angel always missed, Max angel newly winged, Verbena, Cricket, and Henry the goofball, thank you for the privilege of being in your always illuminating lives, for curling up in my lap, for the nudges that remind me there is always time to play ball, for the stinky kisses and the jumps for joy.

Lastly and always to Stewart, thank you for our life together, made all the more precious when I remember how hard we have struggled to hang on to it.