I was just reading Wil McCarthy's new book, To Crush the Moon, yesterday. It's the final volume in his Queendom of Sol series. (One of the cool things about being on the Philip K. Dick Award jury is having an excuse to read all these books I was planning to read anyway. Of course, the downside is I'm not allowed to talk about my reactions to them until next year.)

I couldn't help but notice the acknowledgments, where McCarthy says "With special thanks to Anne Groell for buying into my madness, to Deanna Hoak for taming it," etc., for a page and a half. Yep, that's our girl deannahoak right there at the top.

Deanna was the copyeditor for my book, and she's so much more than just a copyeditor. Whenever she had a note that said "I know it's not my place to comment on this, but" (that's verbatim) "this passage of writing SUCKS" (that's, um, a paraphrase), she was invariably right. She also caught and corrected many errors and inconsistencies that made it a better book. It's great to see her get her due praise.

Deanna just finished the first draft of her own first novel. If you know her, be sure to congratulate her. With any luck, pretty soon she'll be writing her own acknowledgments.