This book made possible by. . .

One of my favorite parts of novel writing is crafting the acknowledgments page. Partly because I save it for last, just after having crawled out of my (cave) office, squinting into the sun, and surveying the wreckage, seeing who amongst all my friends and loved ones is still with me, having withstood my latest bout of phone avoiding, door closing, and overall fun shunning.

Acknowledgements rock. It’s a chance to (apologize, make amends), thank all the people I really care about, and show how much they mean to me by adding cryptic prose and inside jokes that only we understand. I like to think of it as an amazing dessert, the kind that hopefully follows one of those “I know it’s good for me but that doesn’t mean I have to like it” kinds of meals. And not to take away from, or in any way diminish the contribution made by those who truly do help keep me going and make it all possible, the truth is, if I were to write a real acknowledgements page, well, it would probably look like something like this:

I’d like to thank the good people at the Monarch Beach Starbucks for the friendly smiles, excellent service, and allowing me to invade that little round table in the corner, where I poached electricity and muttered under my breath for a full ten days last winter, when the FLY ME TO THE MOON deadline just happened to fall the exact same week the roofers showed up to reshingle my house.

Thank you to the makers of Proactive for saving my (life, chin, self-esteem, T-zone), skin. I mean, just because I write teen fiction, doesn’t mean I want to revisit my teen acne. And now, thanks to Proactive, I can concentrate less on zits and more on words. Are you listening Rodan & Fields? I am endorsing your product! For free even! Which is about two gazillion dollars less than what Jessica Simpson charged.

Muchos gracias to my good friends at the Dana Point, Ocean Ranch, Golden Spoon Frozen Yogurt for providing a healthy, tasty, sugar rush, that has never let me down, and has helped me beat many a pending deadline.

I’m completely indebted to The Gap for creating the world’s best, most versatile, navy blue sweatpants. The one’s that take me from bed to chair to Starbucks to Golden Spoon to chair to couch and back to bed again in absolute comfort and style.

Also, thank you to Ugg, who probably without even realizing it, somehow managed to create the perfect pair of slippers to go with the aforementioned sweatpants.

And of course, huge thanks go out to Meg Cabot. Yes, that Meg Cabot. And even though we’ve never met, and even though I’m sure she has no idea who I am, I just couldn’t have done it without her. Seriously. Every time I feel like throwing it down and heading for the beach, I force myself to glance at my copy of ALL AMERICAN GIRL and think: What would Meg do? Would Meg be packing her beach bag when she had a book due? And even though I can’t say for sure, I like to think that she absolutely would not. I mean, you don’t get to publish a bazillion books a year by slacking off and hanging on the beach. So, yeah, thank you Meg.

But most of all thank you to the World Wide Web. Without you, I could never waste so much time, spend so much money, and learn so much useless information and actually call it research. That’s right, Defamer, Nordstrom.com, Daily Candy- I’m thanking you, for getting me through the day, and providing the laughs, insight, and credit card debt I so require to keep it going.