Chapters (43)
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Books by Ben Philippe
- Back Ad
- Copyright
- About the Publisher
No matter how much I love Henri and Corinne—and I do—it took forever to lock into their voices. At some point, Corinne was a spoiled brat in a penthouse and Henri, the quiet dog walker hired to teach her responsibility. That version of Halti was a classist grump with a serious chip on his shoulder about the rich. Most of the story ended up taking place during mandatory puppy walks. I’ll be the first to say it was a bad draft all around. And that fully written version of the story is sitting somewhere on this very laptop, smirking at me, bloated from the eight months of my life it ate up! That jerk cost me a full half-inch of my vertical hairline.
I can’t account for how they’ll be received, but I’m happy to say that Henri and Corinne are their truest versions within the book you’re holding and for that, the following people have my eternal gratitude:
Alessandra Balzer. I still don’t have a manager and don’t quite know what a manager does, to be honest, but I assume it is for those unlucky folks out there who do not have an Alessandra Balzer in their lives to hold their hands through every step of the book-making process. (Tee-hee, suckers.) She is the best editor you could hope for.
And I’ve also been blessed on that front with the amazing folks at Alloy Entertainment. I owe Viana Siniscalchi, Sara Shandler, Joelle Hobeika, and Joshua Bank my firstborn and that is all there is to it. They’ll refuse because they are very nice and sane people, but I’ll place it in their arms and dash off. Viana: don’t let Josh raise my fictional offspring as a disgusting Rangers fan. (Hmm, maybe writing these at three a.m. wasn’t the best idea.)
I’m also forever grateful to Caitlin Johnson, Andrea Pappenheimer, Kerry Moynagh, Kathy Faber, Nellie Kurtzman, Ebony LaDelle, Sam Benson, Sabrina Abballe, Patty Rosati, Mimi Rankin, Katie Dutton, Jon Howard, and Stephanie Macy.
I don’t know all the hands this passed through except that they are all deft and incredibly talented at their specific crafts. I tend to picture HarperCollins as an assembly line of hyper-literary raccoons, which now just sounds adorable. Little glasses on their noses and everything . . . Where was I? Oh, right. Acknowledgments.
Charming as a Verb wouldn’t be complete without that jaw-dropping cover, courtesy of Chris Kwon on design and queen Steffi Walthall on art. I mean, my God. Flip to the cover and bask for a moment.
And thank you, book reader, for reading. Without someone picking up that little box of pages at the end, the whole endeavor would have been for nothing.
The end!
Fin!
Rasengan!
Valar Dohaeris!
Avada Kedavra!
About the Author
Photo by Richard Louissaint