Bridget answered first. “Well, I still have a year of high school. And I’m thinking about where I might want to go to college. Meanwhile, a friend is teaching me to cook this summer.” Her eyes went to Ajay, who was sitting in a reserved seat in the front row right next to her dad. Now he grinned and gave her a thumbs-up. He was still a little bit in awe of how big a deal Bob really was.

The woman in the sundress rephrased her question. “What about writing? Are you two working on anything new?”

Bridget and Bob exchanged a look. “There might be a little something in the works,” he said. They had started brainstorming a prequel set in the same universe as Swords and Shadows, but featuring a seventeen-year-old girl. A girl who had no magic. A girl a lot like the one Bridget had started writing about earlier.

At that, the woman started to clap, and soon the whole audience had joined in. Bob nodded at Bridget. Together, they got to their feet and took a bow.

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

I think every writer, if they write long enough, eventually writes a book where one of the main characters is a writer. Eyes of the Forest is mine.

Bridget was named in honor of Bridget Zinn, an amazing young adult author who died from colon cancer at 33. Check out her lovely book, Poison. So many people helped me pull this book together. Any errors are my own.

Joe Collins, a firefighter and paramedic, helped me figure out if handcuffs would melt in a fire as well as how to treat a compound fracture. Paul Dreyer, CEO of Avid4 Adventure (avid4.com), who was my wilderness medicine instructor when I was researching Playing with Fire, answered questions about fractures and infections.

Robin Burcell, a former cop and now bestselling author, helped me understand how my fictional cops would view fans.

Don Read at Pacific Typewriter did not even blink when I showed up at his shop with a pair of handcuffs and questions about whether it would be possible to snap off a typewriter part and use it to shim your way out of handcuffs. (The answer is yes, if you use the part called the ribbon vibrator.)

Krystina Foelker, who is active in Refuge LARP, a local Live Action Role Play, helped me understand LARPing. While LARPing, people take on the personas and abilities of someone other than themselves and then act out adventures.

Folks at the Barony of Three Mountains, my local chapter of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) let me observe their combat event, which featured armored participants. SCA is a medieval living history organization re-creating the arts and skills of pre-seventeenth-century Europe.

Macmillan Publishing’s anti-piracy manager, Catherine Bogin, helped me think about the ins and outs of selling illegally obtained book chapters on the dark web.