Acknowledging those who proved to be priceless strengths along my journey in creating Tales of The Drui.
A part of me aches to reach out to certain groups and people, to extend my hand, to raise my voice and say thank you.
Greatest of thanks to the staff at Google, who gave me the little, yellow guy, who I deemed ‘Steve’. When you spend that much time with something, no matter how inanimate, you name it. Dropping Steve onto a map and entering worlds at a blink of an eye made so much of my imagery possible. Because of your work, you allowed me to walk the streets of Trondheim, to follow the river Glomma, and gaze upon the fjords, all without ever stepping foot in Norway. Thank you.
To the staff at Wikipedia; for the accumulated history, the lists of recommended reading you supplied, and for paving the road of sourced hyperlinks that allowed me to journey back a thousand years. Because of you, I was able to find John Lindow, John Haywood, and Snorri Sturluson. Because of you, I was able to enter the world I so desperately needed to create. Thank you for being the scriveners of our times.
My sincerest thanks to the people of Norway, whose passion to capture their love for the outdoors showed me their home through YouTube, Flickr, and Google.
To each of you, thank you, for bringing Norway to me.
Eternal thanks to my science consultant, Isaac Gooshaw. Without your countless casual crash courses in cell division, hydrogeology, Volcanism, metallurgy, martial arts, and, in general, all things that go boom, a significant sense of realism would have been missing from Kallan’s world. Thank you, for walking me through the choreographed, combat scenes. Thank you for finding me tungsten. Thank you for testing the sciences in my world. Without your lessons, your patience, and your motivation, much of this would have been improbable; much of this would have been harder, much of this would have been wrong.
And sincerest thanks to my first readers, who allowed me to see my own story through a reader’s eyes: Isaac Gooshaw, Alicia Chrysler, Angela Dukes, Priscilla Dunham, Tammy Powers, and David Quinn. And to everyone at Scribophile!
