This Is Between Us (22 page)

Thank you, Amy Temple Harper. Thank you, Chloe Caldwell. Thank you, Zachary Schomburg. Thank you, Mike Daily. Thank you, Mom. Thank you, Matt Sampsell.

Gratitude and love: Jamie Iredell, Andrew Monko, Elizabeth Ellen, Stephen Kurowski, Reuben Nisenfeld, Michael Heald, Susie Bright, Gregory Sherl, Dena Rash Guzman, Magdalen Powers, and the Taxidermy gang: especially Matt Brown, Pauls Toutonghi, Emily Kendal Frey, and Arthur Bradford.

Thanks to Bryan Coffelt and the rest of my Future Tense Books family.

Eternal thanks to my Powell’s Books family.

For Davy, Amelia, Jillian, Jess, Patrick, and Lidia. I admire you all.

For B. Frayn Masters, the love that never stops. You have always been there and have always believed in me—and in this book—even when I wasn’t sure what the heck I was doing.

For Zacharath, my heart.

Thank you to my dream editor, Masie Cochran. My Tin House posse: Nanci, Tony, Meg, Jakob, Diane, Desiree, and everyone else (Cindy Heidemann! XO!).

And thank
you
, especially, reader. Thank you so much.

KEVIN SAMPSELL
is the author of the memoir
A Common Pornography
(Harper Perennial) and the short story collection
Creamy Bullets
(Chiasmus) and the editor of the anthology
Portland Noir
(Akashic). Sampsell is also the publisher of the micropress Future Tense Books, which he started in 1990. He has worked at Powell’s Books as an events coordinator and the head of the small press section for fifteen years. His essays have appeared recently in
Salon
,
The Faster Times
,
Jewcy
, and
The Good Men Project
. His fiction has been published in
McSweeney’s
,
Nerve
,
Hobart
, and in several anthologies. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and son.