The Glassmaker's Daughter

AN AUTHOR’S CONFESSION I never planned to produce a revised version of this, my second book, originally released in 2010. I never expected that I would ever get this book written in the first instance. While I was fulfilling a contract to do so, my marriage was ending in the worst possible way. I was actually at the computer, writing this book, when the final decision rushed through me, careened from me. I kept writing this book through the beginning of a horrid divorce, a demoralizing procedure that lasted seven and a half years. That I wrote not only this book but many more during that time still surprises me to this day. At the end of this tale is my original Acknowledgement. In it, I make a vague reference to my muse. I’d like to make that less vague. Teodoro is modeled after two men, both bearing the name Tom. The first is Tom B. Yes, that Tom B. He and the other wonderful New England Patriots brought me the definitive escapism from my troubled world. They gave me something to look forward to every week when there was nothing true to look forward to in it. They gave me something to hold onto…hope. Tom B’s determined and beautiful masculinity was a perfect model for Teodoro. But he was not alone. There was another Tom in my life at that time, another gloriously handsome Tom. And while wholly innocent because of the nature of my situation, Tom G. also gave me hope…hope that at the end of all my tribulations, there could be something wonderful waiting on the other side…hope that while I was then in my fifties with two almost-grown sons, I was still a woman, I was still womanly. The hope these two Toms gave me infused me with the ability to forge on, to be determined, and to find the core of strength deep within me. Ten books later, that strength and hope still serve me well. To both men…thank you.