NOTES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Aly's story is a pair of books instead of a quartet thanks to J. K. Rowling (I haven't met her!), who taught adults that American kids will read thicker books, which means I don't need four books to tell a complete story.

My thanks, I think, also go to my beloved editrix, Mallory Loehr, who suggested both that I write about a spy and that I write a character who is laid-back and easygoing, not driven. One day I will find the proper manner in which to express my appreciation of an exercise that made a Moebius strip of me for the last three years. Sarai's fate is her idea as well. My gratitude also goes to my Australian editrix, Margrete Lamond, for her very provocative pointers on pomp and on the behavior of gods.

Thanks as ever to the home team, those who gave me help with so many of the problems that cropped up in the Trickster books: my excellent Spouse-Creature, Tim Liebe, who gives me so many plot ideas and twists, and also supplies necessary photographs; my best friend Raquel Starace, fashion consultant on flattering colors for everyone who is not a fair-skinned redhead like me, and the progenetrix (through her discussions of making an inanimate object animate and her analysis of the differences between human and computer animation) of the darkings; my wonderful assistant, Sara Alan, for her proofreading and for her reassurances with regard to my feminist credentials as well as for her tolerance of major author flake-outs; my agent, Craig Tenney, he of the watchful eye and the sound advice; Peter Glassman at Books of Wonder for shoring up my faltering courage; and the excellent Christina Schulman and the National Aviary for crowned pigeons and tropical woods mood enhancement.

I bow also to the Law & Order franchise, World Wrestling Entertainment, National Geographic's photographs of people around the world, and photographer Joyce Tenneson's Wise Women collection in thanks for their inspiration for a number of characters; to the novels of John Le Carré, particularly Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People for insights into effective spycraft, as well as to the innumerable books by innumerable experts I have read on the art of guerrilla warfare.

For musical inspiration I have turned to sources that may appear odd and unrelated, but aren't: Alan Lomax and the singers of his collection Negro Songs and Work Calls, performed by Southern blacks in the 1930s and 1940s; pianist Glenn Gould and his classic recordings of Bach's “Goldberg Variations”; composer Ottorino Respighi and his incredible “Pines of Rome,” of which I have at least three recorded versions with three different orchestras and conductors; and “Two Cries of Freedom: Gypsy Flamenco from the Prisons of Spain,” sung by José Serrano and Antonio “El Agujetas,” Reachout International Records, Inc.

Those interested in the historical sources of some of my ideas and conflicts may want to examine Alexander the Great's conquest of Egypt and his placement of the Greek Ptolemies over the native Egyptians; William the Conqueror's arrival in England and its centuries of consequences; American slavery; the history of Tudor England during the childhood of Edward VI and the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I; and the history of any power that invades a country that is not its own and attempts to keep it. As the Rittevons and Jimajens learn, it's hard to completely pacify a country when the bulk of the people who live there are opposed to being pacified.