The Pleasure Merchant (47 page)

He did not end up marrying either of them.

The story of Thomas Day and his attempt at wife-training is told beautifully in Wendy Moore’s lively
How To Create the Perfect Wife
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2013). A delightful and compelling read, I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys Pygmalion plots. I also owe a debt to Maria Edgeworth’s bizarre 1801 novel
Belinda
, where I first learned about Thomas Day, via her bizarrely heroic caricature of him.

I am very lucky to have the support and love of a great many people, and I would like to thank a few of them here: My husband John Gove, my best friend Raechel Dumas, my mother, my publisher Cameron Pierce and my agent Cameron McClure. My first readers, Selena Chambers, Rob Ziegler, and Jesse Bullington. My friend and mentor Nick Mamatas, who first got me interested in trying my hand at writing crime fiction; my former Greek professor John Marincola and my friends J.T. Glover and Max Campanella, who helped me with the smattering of ancient languages; and David Nickle, who advised me during the revision process.

Undoubtedly I am forgetting someone—likely several someones here—please know that like Sabina, Tabula, and Tom too, even if I don’t remember you, I appreciate you, and you are thanked here, as well.

Molly Tanzer is the author of the Sydney J. Bounds and Wonderland Book Award–nominated mosaic novel
A Pretty Mouth
(Lazy Fascist Press, 2012), the Steampunk weird western
Vermilion
(Word Horde, 2015), cocktail-themed collection
Rumbullion and Other Liminal Libations
(Egaeus Press, 2013), and the novel you just read.
Rumbullion
will be reprinted as a standalone short novel by Lazy Fascist in the spring of 2016. Her short fiction has appeared in
Strange Aeons
,
The Book of Cthulhu
(I and II), and
Fungi
, as well as many other anthologies and magazines. She is also the co-editor of the forthcoming
Swords v. Cthulhu
(Stone Skin Press, 2016). Molly lives in Boulder, CO, where she mostly writes about fops arguing with each other. She tweets @molly_the_tanz, and blogs — infrequently — at mollytanzer.com.

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