David Williams - The Burning Skies

Jerry Ellis, for canoe rides

Michelle Marcoccia, for bike rides

Cassandra Stern, for two decades now and counting

Marc Haimes, for not growing up either

Rob Cunningham, for reminding me where the shore was

Paul Ruskay, for outweirding the competition

Rick Fullerton, for light all those years ago

Andrew Silber, copilot on the strangeways

Zakharov Sawyer, for (not) knowing me in a past life

Jason Marlowe, for his name

Sanho Tree, for pure octane

Mitch Engel, for the best line of 1990

Peter Watts, for debts I’ll just have to pay forward

Jennifer Hunter, may she fly always

And thanks also to …

Local D.C. writers: Tom Doyle, David Louis Edelman, Craig Gidney Jeri Smith-Ready

Not-so-local writers: John Joseph Adams, Jon Christian Allison, Stephen Baxter, Jack Campbell, Jeff Carlson, Erin Cashier, Roz Clarke, Doug Cohen, Richard Dansky, Kelley Eskridge, Neile Graham, Nicola Griffith, Leslie Howle, Dave Hutchinson, Simran Khalsa, Amy Lau, John Scalzi, Stacy Sinclair, Maria Snyder, Melinda Thielbar, Lilah Wild, Bruce Williams, and Mark Williams

The Industry: Jenny Rappaport for representation; Juliet Ulman, David Pomerico, Chris Artis, and Joseph Scalora at Bantam Spectra; Jason Williams and Jeremy Lassen at Nightshade

The Bookstores:

— Duane Wilkins at University Book Store, Seattle

— Alan Beatts, Jude Feldman, and Ripley at Border lands

Books, San Francisco

— Maria Perry at Flights of Fantasy, Albany

— everybody at Borders@BaileysXRoads

The Artists/Web Maestros:

— Randall MacDonald—Josh Korwin and Don Zukes at TSA

— Paul Youll

— Stephen Martiniere

The Bloggers:

— Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders at io9

— Mike Collins at Rescued by Nerds

— Patrick St-Denis at Fantasy Bookspot

— Graeme Flory at Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review

— Jay Tomio at Bookspotcentral

— Eric Dorsett at Project: Shadow HQ

— Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit

— Robert Thompson at Fantasy Book Critic

— UberJumper at Relic News

The Radio Dudes:

— Jim Freund at Hour of the Wolf

— Howard Margolis at Destinies

— David Durica at Sci-Fi Overdrive

— Adventures in SF Publishing

— Dead Robot Society

— Starship Sofa

The Inspirations:

— Judas Priest

— Judge Dredd

— John Le Carré

— V for Vendetta

— Frank Herbert

— the Lo-Fidelity Allstars

— J.R.R. Tolkien

— Robert Anton Wilson

— Edward Gibbon

— Thucydides

— anything starring Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1980s

The Cat:

— Spartacus (like he gives a #$@!)

Descended from Australian convicts, D AVID J. W ILLIAMS nonetheless managed to be born in Hertfordshire, England, and subsequently moved to Washington D.C. just in time for Nixon’s impeachment. Graduating from Yale with a degree in history some time later, he narrowly escaped the life of a graduate student and ended up doing time in Corporate America, which drove him so crazy he started moonlighting on video games and (as he got even crazier) novels. The Mirrored Heavens was written over a seven-year period, and sold to Bantam Spectra in the summer of 2007 along with the rest of the Autumn Rain trilogy.

The Burning Skies is the second book of that trilogy, but has been designed to accommodate readers who (however inexplicably) missed the prequel. Learn more about the early twenty-second century at www.autumnrain2110.com.