Read A Lady in the Smoke Online
Authors: Karen Odden
A Lady in the Smoke (38 page)
To George, Julia, and Kyle, always
My sincere thanks to all those who read drafts of this novel from when I first began drafting it nearly ten years ago, especially Gail Tsukiyama, Stefanie Pintoff, Masie Cochran, Mame Cudd, Anitha Weiss, LaDonna Ockinga, Kathy McAvoy, Tim Tays, Jennifer Boone, and Kristin Griffin. Thanks also to friends who provided advice on legal and medical aspects, especially Jody Hallam and Evan Leibner. Thanks to Doug Steinmiller for his input on the cover art. Thanks to Tom Standage for answering my questions about telegrams. Special thanks go to Ralph Harrington, whose dissertation,
The Neuroses of the Railway: Trains, Travel and Trauma in Britain, c. 1860-1914,
was a rich source of inspiration and information. My thanks to the authors of all the aforementioned books that I consulted; any historical missteps are mine. Thanks also to New York University, for financial support while I wrote my dissertation on Victorian railway disasters in popular and medical literature and ephemera.
Special thanks to Maddie Raffel for plucking my manuscript out of the slush pile, to Josh Getzler for taking it on, and Danielle Burby for loving it; and to Priyanka Krishnan for being an extraordinary editor and for believing in it for several years before choo choo went boom for good. Thanks to the entire Alibi team, especially Gina Wachtel; Caroline Teagle, who created the cover, which I adore; Ashleigh Heaton and Erika Seyfried, who walked the newbie through the marketing process; and Nancy Elgin and Madeline Hopkins, whose careful copyediting provided the final polish. Thanks to Bill Polito, who told me years ago that I could write, and to Christie Maroulis, whose support is forever etched in metal. Love and thanks to my daughter, Julia, who has read every word of every novel I've ever written and offered her thoughtful feedback; to Kyle for his unshakable faith that I'd be “published soon”; and to my husband, George, who has supported me in every way possible and without whom this book never would have made it to the light of day.
PHOTO: TINA CELLE
K
AREN
O
DDEN
received her PhD in English literature from New York University. She has contributed essays and chapters to books and journals, including
Studies in the Novel,
the
Journal of Victorian Culture,
and
Victorian Crime, Madness and Sensation;
and has written introductions for books by Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope. She has worked as an editorial assistant at McGraw-Hill, as a media buyer for Christie's Inc., and as a bartender at the airport in Rochester, New York, where she learned to mix a mean martini. She currently serves as an assistant editor for the academic journal
Victorian Literature and Culture
and resides in Arizona with her husband, two children, and a ridiculously cute beagle named Rosy.
A Lady in the Smoke
is her first novel.
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