by Toby Tate
Toby is also a songwriter and musician and lives with his family near the Great Dismal Swamp in northeastern North Carolina.
Acknowledgments
Immeasurable thanks and love to God, my wife, Laura, and daughter, Zoe, the lights of my life and my inspiration.
Heartfelt thanks to my friend and novelist, the late Stephen March, for editing, for believing in me, and for always urging me over that next hill.
Special thanks to former Dismal Swamp State Park Superintendent Joy Greenwood and Park Ranger Signa Williams for enduring my phone calls and interviews about their jobs and about the Dismal Swamp, and to historian Wanda McLean for pointing me in the right direction. Thanks also to my professors John Luton, Kip Branch and Joe Lisowski at Elizabeth City State University, my alma mater, for guiding me down the literary path to excellence.
Thanks to my colleagues at The Daily Advance, especially ex-Coastie Chris Day for answering my Coast Guard questions. Thanks to Don and LuAnne Pendergraft for reading my first draft and answering my questions about Blackbeard the Pirate.
I have to thank my friend from the days of Planet Music, Michelle Brown, for reading my final draft and for her encouragement.
A shout-out to Jeff Dennis at Nightbird Publishing, a fellow musician and writer who believed in my book enough to make my dream a reality. Thanks, Jeff. Rock on. Thanks to author and publisher David Niall Wilson at Crossroad Press for giving me the opportunity to be a part of the e-book revolution.
Last but definitely not least, I want to thank my amazing literary agent, MacKenzie Fraser-Bub at Trident Media Group, for her guidance and encouragement; Michael Wilson, President of Permuted Press, for giving this unknown author a chance at superstardom; and Hannah Yancey, managing editor at Permuted Press and a fabulous human being, for going above and beyond.