Machine Man (serial)

Page 186.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

You there. Yeah, you. Thanks.

One of the most interesting parts of this project was the comments: they kept me in touch with what readers thought, threw up ideas, and became a kind of meta-work: “The Annotated Machine Man,” maybe. Thank you to everyone who contributed a comment. And special thanks to those who contributed many, many comments, the most prolific of whom were: Pev (still interesting), gStein, CrystalR, Toby O, Electrichead, David, Ben, fredzfrog, Stygian Emperor, Mapuche, Chemical Rascal (haiku on demand), coolpillows, Alex, Ian Manka, Felix , C Leffelman, SilverKnight, Yannick, dabbeljuh, Abgrund, Alan Westbrook, SexCpotatoes, regtiangha, Neville, Adam, tim, Katie Ellert (“Where’s Lola? WHERE’S LOLA?”), Ajna, Isaac, Joe M., Justin, towr, Morlok8k, Ballotonia, Sander, and Robert Bissonnette. Many times I clicked through to the previous day’s comments with a sense of dread, the growing suriety that everybody had surely hated it, but I was always (almost always) instead met with cheers, jokes, and crazy spin-off ideas that buouyed me forward. Before I began, I was tempted to put a warning on the comments page, something like: “Just so you know, being too critical of this thing while I’m still writing it may cause me to lock up completely.” I didn’t do that, and didn’t have to. You were all far nicer to me than I deserved.

I also want to mention Michael Ian Minter again. Now, I don’t want to encourage people to go around goading authors, particularly when that author is me, but Minter’s kick in the pants essentially decided me on doing this. And since I would have fully sheeted home the blame to him had it all gone spectacularly wrong, it’s only fair I thank him now.

Thank you to Jen for her patience with me on those days I struggled with my deadline (“I’m not happy with my page. I have to redo my paaaaage”), and for telling me it sounded like a pretty good idea to begin with. Ditto for my agent, Luke Janklow, who also made sure this fun experiment in real-time fiction didn’t break me financially, finding fans in Zachary Wagman of Vintage Books and, with Brian Siberrel, Cathy Schulman of Mandalay Pictures.

186.