by Matt Killeen
Thank you to my Scooby Gang—Anna Mainwaring, Luci Nettleton, Kim Hutson, and Paula Warrington—and the other SCBWI gang, far too numerous to name individually, for their help and support. Thank you to all the other writers who have looked after me and showed me how this author thing is done.
Thank you to my publishers on both sides of the Atlantic:
To Kat, Jacob, and Jessica at Usborne’s publicity department for their patience and appearing with a bottle of water before I knew I needed one.
To Stevie Hopwood, Anna Howorth, Hannah Reardon, Anne Finnis, Rebecca Hill, Becky Walker, Peter himself, and everyone else in the multicolored hot air balloon.
To designer extraordinaire Will Steele for all the lovely gold foil.
To all the Usborne Independent Organisers, especially Dionne Lakey and her crew for rescuing me in Milton Keynes.
To everyone at Viking—Janet Pascal, Jody Corbett, Bree Martinez, Kristin Boyle, Vanessa Carson, Mary Raymond, and Summer Ogata, to name just a few. Thank you for your belief. And for sending my son Sleep Train, the sound of bedtime ever since. Clickety-Clack.
To the teams in Italy, Spain, Poland, Romania, Czech Republic, Portugal, and Brazil for bringing Sarah to the majority non-English speaking world.
As for my editors and the serial killers of my darlings, Kendra Levin at Viking and Sarah Stewart at Usborne, my gratitude and admiration knows no bounds. I hope I continue to make you proud, and annoy you with my ellipses. . . .
And down there at the abyssal level of gratitude is my agent Molly Ker Hawn. Thank you. I am relieved, every day, to have passed your asshole test and hope to continue to.
Thank you to the whole team at TBA, especially Amelia Hodgson in London, fellow Mets fan Victoria Cappello in the Big Apple, and their co-agents, especially Dana Spector in Los Angeles.
To the ultimate repositories of appreciation . . . Thank you to my amazing children and extended family and friends, without whom all this, not to mention my life, would seem hollow and empty. As for my wife-slash-best-friend-slash-business-partner-slash-muse-in-chief Anne-Marie . . . what can be said that I didn’t say last time? Words are inadequate, and that’s an admission filled with existential horror, coming from a writer. So, I shall keep it simple: Thank you for everything. I love you.
And you, Coco-Mojo, sit, stay, good girl.
As a postscript, and climbing onto my soapbox, thank you to the professional librarians of now and my past for nurturing me and a billion other children. Libraries and their custodians widen horizons while democratizing knowledge and understanding. They provide quiet spaces for those who may not be privileged enough to have their own, not to mention delivering access to local and national public services. There is no substitute for professionally run libraries, and anything that threatens them is a threat to society.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Matt Killeen was born in Birmingham, in the UK, back in the war-mad seventies--a hometown largely demolished and rebuilt in his lengthy absence. People tend to dismiss what comes more easily to them as unworthy, so it took him far too long to realize he was a writer. He worked as an advertising copywriter and largely ignored music and sports journalist in the noughties, before fulfilling a childhood dream to join the LEGO® Group in 2010. He left after eight years, and an unconscionable amount of money spent in the staff store, to become a full-time author. A lover of costume parties, he is an avid gamer, soccer fan, toddler wrangler, and warrior for truth and social justice. Although a devout urbanite, he has somehow ended up surrounded by fields in a house full of LEGO® bricks and musical instruments, with his two diversely aged children, Nuyorican soul mate, and neurotic, fluffy dog. Orphan Monster Spy was his debut novel, and he has still not learned to touch-type.
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