by Matthew Iden
Finally, to the team at Thomas & Mercer and especially my editor Kjersti Egerdahl—thank you for giving me the opportunity to introduce Marty to a wider world.
Notes
Many of the specific locales and situations in The Spike—the Brickyard and the Trumble Theater, for instance—are purely fictional. Others, like the Quarters, are there; the names have been changed. Still others—the 8th Street corridor, the Atlas district, the Chain Court, the Golden Triangle—are real and worth visiting.
Marty’s battle with post-remission depression describes a very real condition among cancer victims and survivors. It was first brought to my attention in a conversation with Eric Cohen and Drucilla Brethwaite of Life With Cancer (www.lifewithcancer.org). Details of Marty’s struggle, such as the Anxiety Diary and the advice Nurse Leah gives him in Chapter Four, are taken from the excellent book The Cancer Survivor’s Companion, by Dr. Frances Goodhart and Lucy Atkins.
All errors in locales, procedure, and function of corporate real estate (especially as it pertains to local government) are my own. Some of the broader sociological concepts (like Michael Denton’s theories in Chapter Eighteen) are my own.