Annabel Lee Page 31

  Then another publisher said she liked the book a lot, but it wasn’t religious enough. If I’d go back through and beef up the spiritual elements of the plot, her publishing committee would likely be interested. What could I do? I turned her down too.

  See, Amy and Jan? Writing Annabel Lee was a complete waste of time. I told you so!

  Then, in 2014, Vicki Crumpton at Revell came along. And this was strange: She read the book (even though she knew I wasn’t really a novelist). She liked the book. And she didn’t demand that I rewrite the whole thing to make it fit her preconceived notions of what was or wasn’t “spiritual.”

  Huh.

  Well, I warned Vicki, I know some people on your publishing team, and they probably won’t like hearing my name around the office. She just smiled and told me—in the most polite and respectful way—that doing her job was really none of my concern, now was it?

  Long story short, Vicki won.

  Next thing you know, here I am on a lazy Sunday afternoon, writing an absurdly convoluted story in the space where acknowledgments are supposed to go. But all that is to say . . .

  Special thanks to three strong-willed, wonderful women who made this book a reality: my wife, Amy. My pastor’s wife, Jan Hummel. And of course, my editor, Vicki Crumpton. All of you make my life better—even when I stupidly get in your way.

  —Mike Nappa

  Summer 2015

  Mike Nappa is an entertainment journalist at FamilyFans.com, as well as a bestselling and award-winning author with more than one million books sold worldwide. When he was a kid, the stories of Edgar Allan Poe scared him silly. Today he owns everything Poe ever wrote. A former fiction acquisitions editor, Mike earned his MA in English literature and now writes full time.

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