China Boat

— Acknowledgements —

My deepest thanks to everyone who has read this story. My very deepest thanks, to those of you who have written me.

As I said in the forward, this book is dedicated to Cole Parker and to John Francis, the Pecman, for a specific reason. And that is, that the very earliest seeds of this story were planted long ago by my reading of Cole's excellent story, 'What I Did On My Summer Vacation'; and, by the discussion, primarily between Cole and John Francis, which came after.

As with most of Cole's stories, 'What I Did On My Summer Vacation' got me  …  thinking.

If Cole will forgive me for providing a spoiler, (and stop here if you haven't yet read it), a key premise of the plot is that working for, or involvement with, an intelligence service can also involve one's family. Maybe, inevitably so, at least to a certain extent. Cole and John Francis discussed this in the forums, and John Francis mentioned some of the YA novels by Anthony Horowitz, which touch on the same idea.

 

I found Mr. Horowitz' books  …  a little strange, actually; but that's a topic for another time.

 

In any event, these ideas kicked around in my head, a little; until the Arab Spring and several wars happened, and we saw dictators falling, and their sons and sons-in-law and relatives, who were running security services for them, falling at the same time. And that made me think about the idea, even more.

And that started me reading.

Oh, my; there are some surprising things to be learned, even in our own country's past.

And so, the idea took hold. I've always been interested in history, with a particular emphasis on the between-the-wars period, of the 1920s and 1930s, and the politics and trends of the time; it seemed like an interesting idea, to set my story back then.

An important side benefit would be exploring how the world looked to LGBT people back then, too, and what they/we had to do, to get by in it; I wanted to provide a testimony, of sorts. The world of 1937 might be an interesting place to visit, in print, maybe, but I am personally very glad I do not have to live there  … 

 

A few special thanks.

First, to my two editors, who suffered through a great deal. Don't blame them for the final results! I can be stubborn.

Second, again, to John Sibley, who put the first chapter into html for me, and reviewed my coding of the earliest few chapters.

Third, to Colin Kelley. There was a moment when we were about to start posting chapters, and it seemed that the CSS file for the whole story had been lost. Colin undertook to forensically reconstruct one, just from the clues in the formatted chapters. That was a heroic, and extremely generous thing to do, and he produced wonderful stuff. As it turned out, we had a backup CSS file, so it wasn't necessary to use his replacement; but I will always deeply appreciate the gesture, his generosity, and the effort.

Last of all, thanks to Mike, for posting this story, and for putting up with me. Between my habit of fixing typos after posting, and then my reformatting of most of the chapters halfway through posting to display properly on tablets and cell phones, I put him through a great deal. Thank you, Mike.

And again, thank you to all of my readers.