Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Kate McKinley for getting me involved, helping me internalize the VQS format, listening to my rants, being relaxed when things were tense and tense when things got laxfor being such a great editor on such short notice, and for having the proper galoshes for wading through my sloppy sentences! I would like to thank Cary Norsworthy for her patience and support, Tage Widsell at Propellerhead Software in Sweden for answering my questions, responding to my emails, and weathering general pestering from me while steering a behemoth with his teeth. I would also like to thank the Peachpit team: Rebecca Ross, Gloria Marquez, Owen Wolfson, Carol Henry, Liz Welch, and also Marjorie Baer and Nancy Davis for their patience and willingness to do multiple U-turns.

Thanks also to Mark Hirsch and John Paul for giving me a chance, and to Michael Henry at Cryptic Studios for keeping me in the loop and "looping with me in the keep," and to Lani Minella for being the best Sorceress Gauntlet will ever have.

But most of all I would like to thank my wife, Stephanie, for the patience it took to put up with me and the faith it took to keep me going, and my daughter, Eve, for helping me keep my perspective while swimming in a 1-inch-deep pond full of sharks!