The Loop
Page 28
Everything is as it should be.
I always knew I wanted to be a writer. What I didn’t know was—to get a book published—you need a large number of people to believe in you.
The first person is, of course, yourself, and then the people you trust enough to allow them to read your work. After that, you send your manuscript out to the big, scary world of the professional booky people.
I want to thank all of those people here.
Sarah, my wife—I wouldn’t have finished this book without you. Thank you for being my first proofreader, and for being my favorite person.
Mum and Dad—for putting up with my insane years. For reading to me and teaching me to be creative.
Hollie, my sister—for being the most encouraging person in the world, and for showing me what good music is, what good movies are, and what good books are.
Chloe Seager, my agent—for being the first in the “big endless advice,” and for making The Loop infinitely better than when it first came to you.
Kesia Lupo, my editor—for being the second of the booky people, and for being a plot-wizard who fixed so many issues with the story.
James Carroll—85% Jedi.
Barry Cunningham—you have a life-sized polar bear wearing a fez in your house. How could you not be the coolest person on earth?
Laura Myers—for getting me over the finish line.
Elinor Bagenal—also a Jedi.
The entire Chicken House team—you’ve all pushed me and this story to be the best it can be. I can never thank you enough.
BEN OLIVER grew up in Scotland and began writing long before he could spell. He attended the University of Stirling, where he studied English but spent most of his time trying to write a novel. Ben’s first short story was published when he was eighteen, and since then he’s been published in over a dozen literary magazines and anthologies. Fueled by astounding amounts of coffee, Ben completed The Loop—his first full-length YA manuscript—in Edinburgh, where he currently lives and teaches English at secondary school.
Copyright © 2020 by Ben Oliver
All rights reserved. Published by Chicken House, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, CHICKEN HOUSE, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
Published simultaneously in the United Kingdom in 2020 by Chicken House, 2 Palmer Street, Frome, Somerset BA11 1DS.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
First edition, April 2020
Jacket design by Maeve Norton
Jacket art © 2020 by Vault 49
e-ISBN 978-1-338-58932-0
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