Family has a way of doing that.
And for helping each other: I spent twenty years trying to get away from them, trying to deny my connection to my family, and it was this last year when I fell apart completely, was utterly dysfunctional, that they all lined up and kept me alive through the worst event in my life, when my fiancée had a seizure while driving on December 4 and plummeted off the side of an overpass in Seattle.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is the culmination of the support, abiding patience and dogged endurance of many, many people, especially my family: my older brother, Daniel Martinez, my younger brother, Derek A. Martinez, my sisters Mary (Mimi) Guess, Margie (Mimi) Moczygamba, and Sylvia de los Santos, my mother, Velva Jean Martinez, my father, Domingo C. Martinez, and especially my grandmother, La Señora Virginia Rubio. Partners and spouses are included in that, meaning Corwin Moczygamba, Mark Guess, Robert Swanagan, and Orlene Ezekiel. And whoever happens to be with Dad when this prints: you’re special, too.
My friends who believed and encouraged me, and dealt with the prickly parts: Amy Niedrich, above all, then the McCartys, Andrew and Pam, of course, my dear friend Philippe Critot and the lovely Mrs. Critot (whom I’ve never met, but who yells at me when Philippe and I are talking on the phone). There’s Kim McIver and her husband, John, who’ve been terribly encouraging since the late 1990s. And I owe a debt of gratitude for the following friendships: Camille Ball, Chris Arteaga, Eric Lawson, and Robb Garner.
Of course, there are the people who helped make this happen: Brianna Morgan, for helping with copy editing. Also, there’s the best agent in the world, Alice Martell, who took me on as a completely unknown quantity: an author simply could not ask for a better champion, and my editors at Globe Pequot/Lyons Press, Lara Asher and Kristen Mellitt, and their keen sense of story and tenses. And I would not be writing this without the help of Jeffrey Gustavson, Odette Heidelman, Martin Rock, and Willard Cook at Epiphany Literary Magazine: thank you all, so, so very much for your vision and encouragement. Also, the staff at This American Life for bringing the Mimis to radio: Ira Glass, Robyn Seimyn, and Nancy Updike.
Finally, this book would not have been published if it weren’t for Sarah J. Berry, who guided me through the darkest period of my life and brought me into the brightest. I can’t imagine where I’d be if you hadn’t been there, Sarah.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Domingo Martinez lives in Seattle, Washington. His work has appeared in Epiphany, and he has worked as a journalist and designer in Texas and at virtually every periodical in Seattle, including the Stranger, Seattle Weekly, the Seattle Times, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, along with a number of other publications.
Boy Kings of Texas Page 39
