Acknowledgments
FIRST, THANKS TO THE USUAL SUSPECTS: my wife, Lisa Gold; my agent, Melanie Jackson; and my editor, Alison Callahan. Thanks also to Lydia Weaver, Olga Gardner Galvin, Jeanette Perez, Matthew Snyder, Harold and Rita Gold, Kathy Cain, Charles McAleese, Michael Hilliard, and my unpaid P.R. staff at Queen Anne Books: Patti McCall, Cindy Mitchell, Tegan Tigani, Lillian Welch, Hilary Vonckx, Torrie Marshall, Hollis Giammatteo, Mary Helbach, Irene Piekarski, Anne Wyckoff, and Nichole Mogen.
Louis Collins and the Book Club of Washington were my test audience for the first draft of Bad Monkeys’ opening chapters, and their positive response convinced me that this was indeed the book I wanted to be working on. Jennifer Smith, Christopher Bodan, and Zoe Stephenson read the finished manuscript and cleared up a few lingering questions. Zoe Stephenson also double-checked my Latin, and John Crowley triple-checked it. Anna Leube helped me with my German. Josh Spin answered my off-the-wall medical questions with his usual aplomb. Philip K. Dick, Trey Parker, Matt Stone, David Simon, Lawrence Sutin, Neal Stephenson, David Friedman, Bruce Schneier, Jan Harold Brunvand, Neil Steinberg, and the Reverend Jack Ruff provided inspiration, insight, and/or clever anecdotes. Thank you all.
In the muse department, thanks to Pamela Sue Martin, Liz Phair, and Evil Willow.
And finally, thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts, whose grant of a Literature Fellowship helped buy me the time I needed to finish this novel. The government may not fight evil, but it does have its moments of grace.
About the Author
MATT RUFF WAS BORN IN NEW YORK City in 1965. His father was a hospital chaplain who descended from a line of peaceful Midwestern dairy farmers; his mother was a missionary’s daughter who grew up battling snakes and scorpions in the jungles of Brazil. Between the two of them, he received an interesting moral education.
Ruff published his first novel, the cult classic Fool on the Hill, in 1988. His most recent novel, Set This House in Order, won the James Tiptree, Jr., Award, a Washington State Book Award, and was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. He is also the recipient of a 2006 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship.
Ruff lives in Seattle with his wife, Lisa Gold.