Third Daughter (The Dharian Affairs, Book One) (40 page)

I hope this turns into a project you can finish and sell! I'd totally show all my friends my name on the acknowledgments page.

Well, here you are, Rick!

Your spark of a story kept smoldering for two years, nagging the back of my brain, before I finally turned
Third Daughter
into a proper novel. It took another year before it was ready for publication. Shockingly, the first line remains the same, although the rest has morphed substantially. Thank you for the nudge and the encouragement—without you, this novel literally would not exist!

Further thanks are due to the wonderfully talented freelancers who helped bring
Third Daughter
into its final form: Byron Quertermous, who pinch-hit a developmental edit and convinced me this needed to be a trilogy; Sher A. Hart, who lent her sharp copyediting eye to clean up my sloppiness; Ali Cross, who made the book gorgeous on the inside; and Steven Novak, who made it gorgeous on the outside. I’m tremendously lucky to have such wonderful people bringing their talent to bear on my novel!

Special thanks go to my writer-friends and critique-partners, Matthew MacNish and Pavarti K. Tyler, for your insightful notes, quick turn around, and most of all, for loving the story. Thanks as well to Aspi Havewala for the definitive guide to Bollywood movies! That was some of the most fun research I’ve done to date.

Finally, thanks go to my readers for your constant encouragement and excitement about the book as I was writing it. Whether you were following my
Third Daughter
Pinterest page, or dropping notes asking when the book was going to be out, or just gushing over the steampunkery pictures I posted for inspiration—your enthusiasm is literally the steam that drives my story engines.

I hope you enjoy the result!

Susan Kaye Quinn is the author of the bestselling Mindjack Trilogy and the Debt Collector serial, as well as other speculative fiction novels and short stories. The Dharian Affairs trilogy is her excuse to dress up in corsets and fight with swords. Her work has appeared in the Synchronic anthology and has been optioned for Virtual Reality by Immersive Entertainment. Her business card says "Author and Rocket Scientist" but she mostly sits around in her PJs in awe that she gets to write full time. 

Susan grew up in California, got a bunch of engineering degrees (B.S. Aerospace Engineering, M.S. Mechanical Engineering, Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering) and worked everywhere from NASA to NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research). She designed aircraft engines, studied global warming, and held elected office (as a school board member). 
All her engineering skills come in handy when dreaming up dangerous mind powers, future dystopian worlds, and slightly plausible steampunk inventions. For her stories, of course. Just ignore that stuff in the basement. 

Susan writes from the Chicago suburbs with her three boys, two cats, and one husband. Which, it turns out, is exactly as much as she can handle.

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