I’ve had a few complaints about this page–but not the complaints I expected. When I was writing the acknowledgments, I was worried that I’d leave someone out who gave me good comments on the book. It took me a lot of searching through old records, but I think I finally found pretty much everyone. However, I assumed that if I DID leave anyone out, they would complain. (It’s been five years since I wrote ELANTRIS, and a lot of people have read it during that time.)

However, most of the complaints I got weren’t from people I forgot to put on the acknowledgements page. The complaints were from people who were on the page, but didn’t think they deserved to be there!

You see, I added a few names to this list. These were people who hadn’t read ELANTRIS as an alpha reader, but who had been part of one of my writing groups or who had otherwise given me support during the days when I was trying to get published. These people read other books of mine, even if I wasn’t working on ELANTRIS when I met them. So, on this acknowledgements page, I wanted to give a general thanks to all the people who have helped me over the years. That means if you’re on the list and don’t think you belong there, tough!

You get my acknowledgement whether you want it or not!

Anyway, you can see that there are a lot of names on this list. These are a great bunch of people–good critics, great fans, and many of them pretty good writers in their own right. Though at this point, only one of them has a professional novel publication (Rob Wells,) I’m sure that others will eventually join him. When they do, buy their books!

The top list of people includes my closest and most helpful writing groups. The first group, named ‘Here there be dragons’ actually started when I was writing ELANTRIS, and that was the first book the group dealt with. Though we didn’t spend much time on ELANTRIS, I remember meeting in Ben’s office in the BYU alumni house and chatting about the book’s terrible title (see the title page annotation,) among other things. The founding members were Dan, Ben, me, and Nate. We added Peter a bit later on, and he went on to become an editor at Tokyopop. A couple of other people–Krista Olson, Alan Layton, and a few others–did short stints as dragons, but I ended up acknowledging them in other places on the list.

Of those three writing groups, only one is still going. The one with Alan Layton and Kaylynn ZoBell. We meet in Salt Lake every Friday night (yes, I know. That’s the best thing we writers often have to do on Friday nights. . . .) Anyway, they’re a great support and help to me.

Another interesting note is regarding my professors. I intend to dedicate a book some day to the teachers that have helped me over the years. It was a school teacher–the appropriately named Ms. Reader–who gave me my first fantasy book . I can think of few professions as noble as that of teacher, and I am deeply thankful to all of those who have helped me–not just the few names I had room to mention on this page.