Year of the Demon (67 page)

Thanks also to everyone who helped in researching this book. Alex Embry is my point man on cop questions, and I worked him a whole lot harder on this book than on
Daughter
. I’m very fortunate to know Diana Rowland, who in addition to being a former cop is also kicking ass on the writing scene; someone who knows the details
and
the craft is an invaluable asset. D. P. Lyle is invaluable for similar reasons, and is most generous with his medical and forensic expertise. My thanks go out to all the other cops I interviewed and worked with but who asked not to be named. Props again to the Codex hivemind, and to Luc Reid, aka He Who Shall Not Be Named, aka The Man.

Special gratitude is due to Cameron McClure, my agent extraordinaire, and Anne Sowards, my wonderful new editor. (Kat, I still miss you!) Structurally,
Demon
was much harder to put together than
Daughter
, and Cameron and Anne were pivotally important in that effort. To Cameron especially, thanks so much for bearing with me through all the outlines and story lines and worry lines.

Of course my deepest and most heartfelt gratitude goes to all of my readers. Special thanks to Jess Sund and Kati Strande for being early readers and for their general effervescence; to Dave and Kris for being early readers too, though neither of them is known to effervesce; to our mom, my proofreader, and dad, for his enduring belief in my future as a writer; to Chris McGrath for two kick-ass covers in a row; to Stephen Baxter, Jay Lake, Diana Rowland, and Kylie Chan for their kind and very humbling blurbs; to Kirsten Lincoln and her hubby, Naoto, for help with lesser-known Japanese idioms; to my publicist Lindsay Boggs, and to the host sites she hooked me up with for my blog tours; and to anyone else I may be omitting due to general absentmindedness.

Begrudging thanks to Michele for getting me a Facebook presence, and sincerest thanks for everything else. Our dog Kane also deserves an honorable mention. He and his brother Buster were both present in the earliest draft of the manuscript, but Kane’s scene got cut. Sorry, buddy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Steve Bein
teaches Asian philosophy and Asian history at the State University of New York at Geneseo. He has a PhD in philosophy, and his graduate work took him to Nanzan University and Obirin University in Japan, where he translated a seminal work in the study of Zen Buddhism. He holds a third-degree black belt and a first-degree black belt in two American forms of combative martial arts, and has trained in about two dozen other martial arts over the past twenty years. His short fiction has appeared in
Asimov’s Science Fiction
,
Interzone
,
Writers of the Future
, and in exclusive e-Special format from Penguin. He has been anthologized alongside authors such as Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, William Gibson, George R. R. Martin, and Ursula K. LeGuin. Please visit Steve on the Web at www.philosofiction.com and like him at facebook/philosofiction.