Over and over again, as we have worked tirelessly to make this book the best it could be, you pushed me to be better. And every time, you were right. Each of Us a Desert does not exist without you, and I love you for that.
Thank you.
To the women of Deadline City, Dhonielle Clayton and Zoraida Córdova. You invited me into your lives through a Madcap Retreat (and one well-timed visit to a hot tub), then made me a part of our little office community in Harlem. We have spent many late nights together, all on deadline, complaining about the things our industry does wrong, making terrible, terrible jokes, stealing tiny spoons from Jeni’s Ice Cream (ZORAIDA), and you have both seen this book take shape into what it is now. You even took me with you on your trip to my second home: Hawai’i. I don’t think I would be where I am without my work wives. I adore and love you both.
To the homies: Adam Silvera, Arvin Ahmadi, Tiffany Jackson, Justin Reynolds, Ashley Woodfolk, Patrice Caldwell, Jalissa Corrie, Saraciea Fennell, and Kwame Mbalia. Thank you for making me feel like I could survive in New York City. In the world of Kidlit. As a writer. I cherish all the time I’ve spent with each of you, either at writing retreats, writing dates, French fry crawls, or cutting it up at festivals. I love you all.
To my incredible team at Tor Teen, who have been so deeply supportive of me, my work, and my vision: thank you. To Saraciea Fennell, my superstar publicist, who keeps me organized and is one of the reasons my debut book was as successful as it was. To Sanaa Ali-Virani, editorial assistant extraordinaire. To Anthony Parisi, Isa Caban, Eileen Lawrence, Devi Pillai, Renata Sweeney, Zakiya Jamal, Lauren Levite, Lucille Rettino, and all those who played a part in making this book (and Anger) a reality: you have helped my dream come true, and I’m indebted to you all.
To Project LIT, for the incredible support and community. I can’t wait to see you all grow.
To PEN/Faulkner and Lambda Literary Writers in Schools programs: thank you for putting my very queer books in the hands of students. It’s beyond my wildest dreams as a kid who grew up closeted in a small city near the desert to see children get to be their truest selves and express that through literature. You’re all changing the world.
To all the librarians, educators, teachers, students, booksellers, bloggers, Booktubers, bookstagrammers, and readers who have influenced someone reading my work: You are my everything. You have also helped make my dream come true, and I am appreciative of you all.
To the wonderful Mark Does Stuff community, for your patience as I continue to balance being a book/TV blogger and an author, for sticking with me for over a decade, and for allowing me to finally get revenge on all of you for every shocking plot twist you got me to experience. Here’s to another decade of being unprepared.
To all the authors I have befriended in the past three years: I won’t list y’all because there are too many, but I feel so privileged and honored to be in the children’s literature space with so many brilliant, empathetic, and kind creators. Thank you to all the authors who hosted me, were in conversation with me on tour, who gave me advice, who stayed up way too late at festivals and encouraged bad decisions, who made me feel like I belonged.
Thank you.
To Sarah Gailey, for brainstorming, our trauma bonding, your incredible advice for this book and others, your humor, your generosity, your brilliance, and for all the cursed things you send me. I owe you everything.
And finally.
To Baize White. In early 2017, at a writing retreat my agent hosted, I got to watch you read the first outline/synopsis for the book that would become Each of Us a Desert. I have experienced few things as satisfying as watching you get to the massive plot twist that was in the original draft of this book. I loved writing to impress you, and I so deeply wanted to impress you for the rest of my life. Then, a couple months later, you drove me (frequently well over the speed limit, I might add) to the Sonoran Desert so that I could spend days wandering in the heat, documenting the desert as part of the research for this book. Xochitl’s journey would not be what it is if you had not done this for me.
Then I wrote the book over most of 2017. You read it at the beginning of 2018, loved it, and gave me some wonderful feedback. I rewrote it once. And by the time I got to the second rewrite, my first book had come out in the world, and my dream had come true. Unfortunately, our dream was starting to crumble, and it was during that second rewrite—when Miriam insisted that Xochitl have someone her age on her journey, that perhaps the book needed some romantic tension—that I struggled with tension in our relationship. We were far from home, I could not figure out why these two characters should even like one another, and you and I were having such an awful time communicating, being present, making things work.
And that’s how I figured it out. I thought of you.
And then I wrote you.
Emilia and Xochitl are you and I, written backwards. I saw these two characters, unable to communicate, unable to see who they truly were, and then I designed a journey for them that was our own. I guided them to the place where you and I began. Because at the start of our relationship, you traveled an ungodly distance to be with me and tell me that you loved me.
And no one had ever done such a thing.
You read a draft of this last summer. You cried. You told me it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever written.
