Iron Heart
Page 32
Piera, thank you for having my favorite brain. Thank you again for loving ugly things without trying to turn them beautiful. Tony, you’re the coolest, always. I miss you, I love you. Fiona, you’re one of the strongest people I know; I take inspiration from you. Paul, thank you for having more confidence in my abilities than I do.
Kieryn, you were the star of the book one acknowledgments, I’m not going to repeat all that. You know who you are and what you mean. Thanks for consistently saving my ass.
Thank you to Yes Homo for the laughter, for the unconditional love and support, for being there, for being yourselves, for being up for anything: a venting sesh, a Zoom night, a protest, any kind of adventure. Thank you to Amy for the playlists, the enthusiasm, the hand holding, the beach sunsets. You’re a stahh, I love you.
Thank you to the LP: C, E, I, J, K, P, R, W. Y’all are golden all the way to the core. You made a dark time a hell of a lot lighter. Thank you to Ivy for the witching hours, for your galaxy brain, for feeling close even though you’re far. I can’t put emojis in here but you know which ones I’m thinking of.
Thank you to Patrice, lifesaver and ass-kicker extraordinaire, for being brilliant and unstoppable and the all-around best. I feel like I could ask you the meaning of life and where we go after we die and you would not only have the answers, but they would already be written down and annotated. Possibly in a spreadsheet of some sort. I would die on a battlefield for you.
Thank you as always to Lexa and the Glasstown team, present and past, for believing in this story and making it come to life in my head and on the page. Lexa, you’ve been here since before “Once upon a time,” and here we are at “The End.” It’s been a wild ride, and I am so glad to have taken it. I am honored to have been trusted with this story, with these girls. I think we did it justice. Thank you.
Thank you to Brandie Coonis for your help and encouragement, to Maha Hussain for your hard work and creativity, and to Megan Gendell for making this book readable. Once again, I am sorry about all the commas. Thank you to the Inkwell folks for your thoughtfulness and input from the beginning to the end.
Thank you to Karen Chaplin for your eagle eye, to Rosemary Brosnan and everyone at Harper for caring as much about this story as I do, for taking my draft and nudging it into something that makes sense. Thank you to David Curtis—I can’t believe how beautiful this cover is. I don’t know how you managed to top Crier’s, but you did. Thank you to the marketing and publicity team for putting your weight behind this book about queer girls, I truly appreciate it.
And of course, thank you to the readers. I think the best part of the story is whatever the reader creates once they’ve closed the book—if someone cares enough about the story to start telling their own stories about it, in any form, that’s the best. A great many people did that with Crier’s War, and I am forever grateful. Yes, I am talking about your memes. And your incredible art, and fanfiction (I can’t read it, but I know it’s out there), and very cute “Currently Reading” threads, and headcanons and Iron Heart theories and all of it. I wrote Crier and Ayla’s story, but now it belongs to you, and you’re doing such wonderful things with it. Thank you for reading, thank you for caring. I hope this ending fits with whatever you needed it to be. I hope it made you feel hopeful. To the queer readers: I hope you feel loved. In this world, in every world, you are loved. By me and Crier and Ayla and the whole damn universe.
I love y’all. Thank you for supporting Crier, Ayla, and the rest from beginning to . . . well, not ending. Beginning to second beginning, I’d say. The happiest of beginnings.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for loving these girls like I do and beyond. I’ll wrap this up with what I said last time because it’s more important now than ever: I told you my story. Thank you so much for reading it. If you’ve been waiting for a sign to tell yours, this is it. Pretend we’re at a campfire—I’m scooting over to make room for you. I’m passing you a s’more and saying, “Welcome! We’ve been waiting for you! Whatever you have to say, whatever’s been collecting in your heart and the corners of your mind, the world is ready to listen. Let’s hear it!”
About the Author
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NINA VARELA is a nationally awarded writer of screenplays and short fiction. She was born in New Orleans and raised on a hippie commune in Durham, North Carolina, where she spent most of her childhood playing in the Eno River, building faerie houses from moss and bark, and running barefoot through the woods. These days, Nina lives in Los Angeles with her writing partner and their tiny ill-behaved dog. She tends to write stories about young people toppling the monarchy/patriarchy/whatever-archy. On a related note, she’s queer. On a less related note, she has strong feelings about hush puppies and loves a good jambalaya. Crier’s War was her first novel. This is the epic sequel. You can find Nina at any given coffee shop in the greater Los Angeles area or at www.ninavarela.com.
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Copyright
Quill Tree Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
IRON HEART. Text copyright © 2020 by Glasstown Entertainment. Map by Maxime Plasse. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Cover art and design by David Curtis
Cover © 2020 by HarperCollins Publishers
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2020941126
Digital Edition SEPTEMBER 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-282399-1
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-282397-7
* * *
2021222324PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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