Love-shy (31 page)

Acknowledgements

A
S MENTIONED IN THE DEDICATION
, I came up with the idea for
Love-shy
while on holiday with my dear friend Sarah Dollard. As well as being an excellent friend, she is also an excellent writer and story-doctor, and her wisdom and advice helped shape this book from beginning to end. As always, thanks, Snazzy.

Not to sound like a broken record, but I am so totally lucky to have editors like Jodie Webster and Hilary Reynolds, whose unflagging enthusiasm and careful attention to detail make all my books approximately one million times better than they are in first-draft form. Many thanks to them and to all the other Onions.

And of course thanks to my wonderful friends, my parents and Michael – thanks for listening to me rabbit on about love-shyness and Rhesus monkeys and Stepford mothers and all the other nonsense that fills my head. I am a lucky girl indeed to be surrounded by such wonderful people.

The very first draft of this book was written in November 2009, for (inter)National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo is a wild, crazy project where participants attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in thirty days. It's very intense, but lots of fun. You can find out more at
nanowrimo.org
.

Finally, love-shyness is a real thing. There are real people who are love-shy. Some of them just need a little confidence-boosting, but for others, like Nick, it's a serious psychological condition. Anxiety disorders of all types can be very isolating. If you think you have an anxiety disorder, or you know someone who does who you think might need some help – tell someone, and check out these organisations for more information:

HEADSPACE

www.headspace.org.au

—

ANXIETY TREATMENT AUSTRALIA

www.anxietyaustralia.com.au

—

SANE AUSTRALIA

www.sane.org

About the author

L
ILI WILKINSON WAS BORN IN
Melbourne, Australia, in the front room where her parents still live. She was first published when she was twelve, in
Voiceworks
magazine. After studying Creative Arts at Melbourne University, Lili worked on
insideadog.com.au
, the Inky Awards and the Inkys Creative Reading Prize at the Centre for Youth Literature, State Library of Victoria. She now spends most of her time reading and writing books for teenagers. She's won awards for the writing part, but not the reading, unless you count the stopwatch she won once in the MS Readathon.

‘Wry, sly, funny, smart, and very entertaining.'

JACLYN MORIARTY

‘Lili Wilkinson is like a coolgeekgirl Agatha Christie.'

SIMMONE HOWELL