Stephen King once wrote: "In fine, gentle reader, here is a truth that makes the strongest writer gnash his teeth: with the exception of three small groups of people, no one reads a writer's preface...the writer's close family...the writer's accredited representative...and three, those people who have had a hand in helping the writer on his way. These are the people who want to know whether or not the writer's head has gotten so big that he has managed to forget that he didn't do it by himself."
I might nitpick that by putting this after the story I'm cheating those words; probably more people read an Afterword than a Foreword, if only to linger a little longer and understand what they've just finished. I know I do; I've always like seeing the backstage area, I like knowing where the ideas came from, and what was the inspiration. And if it happens to start with a cop show on tv and germinate with old Seventies pop, well, then, so be it. This is the skeleton. It is also the acknowledgement that if I was not overwhelmingly conscious of you, the reader, out there somewhere in cyberland, reading this now, I doubt I would have webbed it all up. Heck, I've been doing long fiction since I was twelve...reading them aloud over the phone to friends, passing out the serial chapters between junior high school classes...this is just a more advanced version of that.
Thanks to everyone who has written and will write with any comments about what you've read. I don't mind hearing trash, either; I'm perfectly willing to acknowledge this isn't perfection. But as I think Alexa says to Ben in her letter, it's the best I could do at this time, knowing what I know right this instant. So let it stand, as is. Thanks also to everyone who was forced/dragged/begged to plow through advance versions and who lent me valuable direction: alextaylr@aol, dyndi@aol in particular. A special thanks to LaurieO398@aol, who read the first ever draft of Name, before it was even half the length it is now. Once I got the general stamp of Mike approval from her, I knew I was on to something good. It was fun to write, and even more fun to hear back from those who read.
For anyone else still reading...acknowledgements to the unwitting participants...every Law & Order cast member ever invented, Amy Grant (my Alexa, at least visually), Abba (the song titles had to come from somewhere, no?), Enya (Alexa's music), Aztec Camera ("A Boy Wonders"), and so on and so forth...this series (can a two-parter really be a series? if not, what is it?) has been very music-heavy. And heck, if there's a soundtrack ever needed, I'm ready and armed.

--Kitt