For this reason, no one saw the cracks that began to form, small at first, but snaking rapidly up and out, as the dam fought to stand against the increasing rush of water.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many thanks to my editor, Samantha Charleton, for the magnificent job she did in helping me take a dung heap of dangling prepositions, non sequiturs, and grammatical hell and make it a publishable work. I also want to thank the people at Temple International Publications for their faith, their insights, and even their critiques. I am eternally indebted to Lauralee for her flawless copyediting, and her many constructive suggestions.
I have to thank my publicists, Antoinette Kuritz, and Shel Horowitz, the marketing maniac, for guiding my book on its path. To my faithful readers, Peter and Cathie, who supported the book when no one else could see the “diamond in the rough.” Without your help and input, Zak would have met a different fate. Thanks to Brie for the spectacular new title. Thanks to Mike Lee and Chris Decatur and MonkeyCmedia, the geniuses behind the design of the book — they gave Gauntlet an identity I would never have imagined on my own. I want to thank the authors who helped me along the way: Jim Rollins, Chris Reich, David Morrell, David Hagberg, John Foxjohn, and Dale Brown. Thanks to Trey and Quay Terry, two brothers of the military persuasion, who were kind enough to offer feedback, criticism, and eventually endorsements. Thanks to James van Doren for educating me about submarines.
I want to thank my wife, Foxy Lady, my four children, and the dogs, cats, and various miscellaneous animals that the kids drag home from time to time, that complete my household, all of whom formed the opinion, many months ago, that the lord of the manor has completely lost it. However, without their faith, support, and love, Gauntlet would have remained nothing more than an idea.
Finally, and most importantly, I want to thank Jared Kuritz for quarterbacking the digitization of the manuscript and creating the electronic version of the book. I also want to thank him for his many suggestions and his hard and diligent work in spearheading the project.
As a final note, many of the refinements in this book were developed as a direct result of the techniques and concepts that I gained at the La Jolla Writers Conference, an amazing yearly retreat organized by Jared, Antoinette, and Richard Kuritz. I’ve learned a trick or two in the five years that I was a student there.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
RICHARD AARON lives in a cold, northwestern city with his wife, four children, and various dogs and cats. He has university degrees in mathematics and law, and a Masters in Law from the London School of Economics. He worked in the real world for several decades before realizing that he was a writer of fiction. Twenty-five years bouncing around the court system is actually a grand education for any creator of fiction.