Dawn to Dusk

AcknowledgementsWe meet again! And I can see you’re already checking the time, because you know I tend to forget this should be short and sweet. I know your time is precious and you’d very much prefer to get on with the reading of the actual book. I promise some of this might be helpful. Dawn to Dusk is a fictional story inspired by real places and real people. I even kept some of their names and squeezed in things that happened in real life. It’s an ode to my first crushes, to my childhood adventures, to my home town, my high school years, and my time spent living in Bucharest, from the first year of University until the very last day in the Capital—ten beautiful years. If you want to guess which events are real, I’d like to play that game and you can always email me. I have to say though, that climbing bit and getting stuck midway? Totally happened. Yeah, I was a bit of an irresponsible tomboy growing up. The thing about writing stories around events and people in your life is that it gets quite emotional. I was used to that though, if you’ve read my MF vampire series, you’ve read about the main character being based on me. What was surprising about writing Dawn to Dusk was the clarity of my memories. I was taken aback by how detailed memories of over twenty years ago still were. Even some from further back came to me with ease. The downside, as always, was my becoming a sobbing, emotional mess. Hey, tissue companies have to make money somehow, right? Less colds during the summer, so let the crying begin! The first group of people I would like to thank (maybe I should also apologize while at it) includes all those who’ve inspired the story: the boys I crushed on, my family, and childhood friends. Speaking of childish loves, you know how they say you shouldn’t piss off authors because they’ll do unspeakable things to you in your books? Well, I made my past flames fall in love with each other, so I think they got off easy…. A big, huge thank you, with the must-have tons of hugs and kisses, goes to all the amazing people who’ve helped me along the journey of this book: Aimee Brissay who’s been there to brainstorm this with and alpha-read a few chapters months ago along with Jo Tannah; my editor, LE Fitzpatrick, who pushes me to make my stories better when she’s not busy writing her own amazing stories; Lily Velden, author and friend, who always encourages me to take the craziest literary rides; Alina F, my dear friend and the creative force behind 8th floor studio who’s responsible for the beautiful cover; Alina C, Loredana, Tina, and Adi, my friend family who’s always rooting in my corner. I’ve never done this one before in my books, but there’s a first for everything. I would like to thank my boyfriend, Mike, for being there along this particularly bumpy ride. Writing this story wasn’t smooth, a lot happened and I ended up sprinting through the second half of the draft. He was there to encourage me, provide evening walks for me to clear my mind, and pretty much use his Voodoo powers to bring my stress levels down. I am extremely grateful for all the support I’ve received from all my online friends. They read, liked, and gushed about the excerpts I posted online, making me feel my stories are worth telling. And here we are, another story for you to hopefully enjoy! Before we part (don’t roll your eyes, you’ve almost made it), I’d like to share a few things with you regarding the timeline and setting of Dawn to Dusk. The story starts about three years after the Revolution of December 1989 which overthrew the Communist regime in Romania. There are occasional glimpses of life before the Revolution and how bad things actually were. Reading through these, some of you might understand why my skin crawls every time I hear college students chanting lines from the Communist Manifesto. That said, I tried to focus more on the beauty of childhood. On how free we were and how much time we spent running outside, busying ourselves with what seemed like great adventures at the time. Unlike Edi, I had to say goodbye to the fun trips to the creek and the forest a lot sooner. Apparently, when we all hit puberty, running around deserted places no longer seemed so appealing. We spent less time at our grandparents. We were older and there were far better things to explore in our home towns. And summer camps to the mountains or the seaside weren’t half-bad either. I always thought I’d missed out because of that. So I let Edi enjoy it more, had him hold on to it a little longer. One more thing, when they are about eleven, my boys swear. I shaped them to mimic the boys I went to school with. Okay, the girls too, but that doesn’t show up as much in the book. The moment we figured out we could swear, we did. It was a way to assert our independence, act like adults, and explore our freedom. There was a lot of misunderstanding of the word “freedom” after the Revolution. When it was just us and our friends, we’d swear. We’d never do it in front of an adult though. And make no mistake, it was worse in Romanian. I debated whether to tone the swearing down for like a second. I decided that in this case realism should trump everything else. Really done this time! Thank you, dear reader, for picking up this book and wanting to discover the story in it. A bigger thank you for reading through this Acknowledgements bit, you really deserve a medal! To first loves and to how they twist, bend, and forge our souls.