Friends, readers, and supporters: The WHOLE of #Team-Root. YOU GUYS. SERIOUSLY.
Also, Joanna Boaz Nash, Jessica Katina, Amelia Moore, Carol Schmid, Sally Peterson, Laine and Brian Bennett, Kim Pauley, Karen Gudgen, Tammy Jones, Tracy and Phillip Dishner. Dishner. That’s DISHNER.
Bloggers, including but not limited to: Mundie Moms, Twilight Lexicon, Novel Novice, YA Sisterhood, Twilight Face-book, MTV Hollywood Crush, VH1’s Fab Life, Amanda from Book Love 101, Young Adult Books Central, and Sabrina Rojas Weiss (who took the chance that helped change everything).
The first teenage readers to send me e-mails and make me feel like a REAL!LIVE!AUTHOR!: Julie Daly and Harmony Beaufort.
Teachers I missed last time: Mrs. Ruth Ann Street, Dr. Gerald Wood, and Dr. Robert Turner. One or two of you might find a part of yourselves in here. And, um, sorry about that. It’s not because I don’t love you! Swear.
Sandra Ballard, again, for telling me I could write when all I needed was permission.
To my family, who means everything. Wayne and Martha Simmons, Keith and Deborrah McEntire, Elton and Mandy McEntire, and my new nephew, Carter, who has all the hope in the world in his eyes.
To Ethan, who still feeds me and the boys when I forget to, and to Andrew and Charlie, who will one day (hopefully) understand why their mama walks around with her brains leaking out of her ears.
And finally, to my grandmother, Doris, who was brave enough to take a ten-year-old to Memphis on a plane, and to my godmother, Carol, who didn’t hesitate to pull a perfectly good dollhouse out of the garbage so we could have our way with our imaginations that week, and who didn’t get mad at all when I dropped my plastic jelly slipper off the paddle boat at Mud Island.
