Forget Me Not by Julie Soto

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

OMG IT’S A BOOK! I cannot believe you paid for, checked out, or pirated my book! What fun!

I might have to thank Ali Hazelwood first. That might be in the contract I signed with her. So thank you, Alison, for convincing me to pull-to-publish a (completely different) story while we were browsing a toy store, like the adults we are. Without your encouragement, guidance, and support, these people would never have been able to pirate my book.

Gaia Banks—my agent, my mother earth—deserves all my affection for lighting up like a Christmas tree when I told her my idea for this book. I must thank her child for coming into the world at exactly the right time so that this book exists in the way it does. Thank you, Gaia, for believing in me, and thank you for staying up way past office hours during That Week due to the time difference. Thank you to everyone at Sheil Land Associates, including Maddie and Alba.

A huge thank-you to everyone at Forever and HarperCollins UK for believing in Forget Me Not, especially my INCREDIBLE editors Junessa Viloria and Martha Ashby, who believed in this book whole-heartedly. Thank you for pulling me back from my questionable jokes and reminding me that not everyone lives in my head, like I’d always assumed. Thank you to the marketing and publicity teams, especially Dana Cuadrado and Queen Estelle, for every little bit of creativity and passion you put into this. And thank you to Beth, Sabrina, Leah, Stacey, and Daniela, and anyone I forgot at Forever and HarperCollins UK, which is probably a lot because I have literally spoken to only three of you at the time of writing this. Thank you to Lori Paximadis! Thank you to my German, Polish, and Brazilian editors, Maria Runge, Alicja Oczko, and Frini Georgakopoulos, for taking a chance!

Thank you to all the brides I’ve bridesmaided for—which is a lot. While not yet at 27 Dresses level, my future is clear.

In much of this book, I’m sure I sound like I don’t know what I’m talking about, but these ladies did their best to help me on all sorts of subjects: Cat Dionisio, Michelle Adamsky, Angelica Whaley, Ashley Mortensen, and Adriana Daft née Zerio all deserve the world. (But anything I got wrong is clearly their fault, thank you very much.)

The only way to survive publishing or a pandemic or publishing during a pandemic is with supportive spaces. Thank you to my besties in Gremlins, MW, Krampus, Words Are Hard, and especially Claire, Jen, Ali, and Kate Goldbeck in The Edge Chat, who wanted good things for me and this book when I couldn’t wish for the good things myself. Thank you, Lucy, for always having my back and setting me up for success. Thank you, Anna Conathan, for being the best coach ever and for introducing me to my Creator Goddess. And to Mar, Cat, and Amanda—thank you for being my cheerleaders, sidechat bitcas, existential crisis counselors, first beta readers, and all-around best friends—fandom or no fandom.

Special thanks to Fran, not only for the nugget that became this book, but also for your selfless creativity that leads so many people to create good stories (follow her at @galacticidiots on the bird app). Thank you to Abby Jimenez for the early blurb! Thank yyoouu ttoo Nikita Jobson for my US cover! *heart eyes* Thank yyoouu for every piece of art you’ve ever been kind enough to create for my fics. I’m so honored to have you as my cover designer and glad you’re getting the recognition you deserve.

To everyone who knows me as Juls or LovesBitca8, thank you. Fanfiction is not a stepping stone to traditional publishing. It’s a home that will always be a part of me. Thank you to the Rights and Wrongs members and the friends at RoR. Thank you to everyone who left a comment or a kudos or reached out to tell me that my work matters.

Thank you to Sacramento, for being the place you always want to leave, but can’t seem to get your heart out of. About seventy-five percent of the places in this book are real. I recommend visiting this terrible, wonderful city ( just not in the summer) and going to the McKinley Park Rose Garden.

Thank you to Jennifer Borasi, Richard Weldon, and Joshua McKinney for teaching me how to write and how to enjoy words. Thank you to my family, especially Grandma Glo, whose dirty mind and wicked humor I inherited, and Grandma Marion, of whom I have one memory—giving her a flower. And finally and most importantly, thank you to my parents for believing in me when I wanted to be an actress, when I wanted to be a musical writer, and now, as I have become an author. Third time’s the charm, maybe? Thank you to my mother for the title of this book, and thank you to my father for reading my *edited* version.