The Sisters Eight Book 9 Read online

  We kept brainstorming as we flew home finally on Christmas Day, and when we got back to Danbury, Connecticut, I began writing, with Greg and Jackie providing ideas and input all the way through. At this point, it was still just to entertain ourselves—since we’d had so much fun dreaming up ideas for the story, we thought it would be fun just to see what the written book would be like. But then, once we were finished with that stage, we started thinking that maybe others would enjoy our creation as well, so I sent Book 1 off to my favorite editor in the world: Julia Richardson at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, who agreed that people like you might like what we’d done.

  As I write this letter, it’s nearly five years since this all started. Five years! Jackie is eleven now and several inches taller than I am. Greg was always taller than I am. Oh, and we have a cat now too, Yoyo. Whenever Yoyo sees me writing here, he looks sure I must be writing about him.

  I’d like to take this opportunity to thank some of the people who have helped the Sisters Eight series be what it is. Thank you to Lisa K. Weber, the artist who does the covers and interior illustrations for the books—we’ve never met Lisa, but no one else could have done a better job at visually representing what was born in our imaginations. Thank you to Carol Chu for design and lettering. Thank you to Karen Walsh for publicizing, Linda Magram for marketing, Betsy Groban for publishing, everyone else at HMH for doing everything else they do, and thank you to Julia, always Julia.

  Most of all, though, I’d like to thank you. I’ve had twenty-two books published so far in my writing career, but nothing—nothing —has given me more joy than writing this with my family for you. And many of you have been writing too. We’ve received letters—oh, have we received letters! Mostly the letters come from kids, but they also come from parents, grandparents, teachers, librarians, booksellers. Often, you want to know when the next book will be out. But you also write to say that you’re our “number 1 fan!” or that your family reads our books when you go on camping trips—often those come from the Canadian contingent. You send pictures of yourselves reading the books and pictures of Sisters Eight board games you’ve created. You send eleven-foot illustrated scrolls detailing your love for the series. Sometimes, you write or someone who loves you writes to say that you didn’t like to read until you discovered the Sisters Eight. You have no idea what that means to a writer.

  Your letters—we have saved them all.

  Because of the love you’ve shown for theSisters Eight from the very beginning, you have always been in my mind and heart as I write the words in each book. When I wrote the cliffhanger ending forBook 4: Jackie’s Jokes and all those carrier pigeons thundered against the Huit home, each carrier pigeon delivering a note that said Beware the Other Eights, I hoped you would be left openmouthed. Whenever I had Rebecca say "Or else they’re dead," I hoped that rather than being scared, you laughed, understanding how outrageously awful Rebecca can be. And when I wrote the last words ofBook 9: The Final Battle . . . for Now, I hoped you would understand that even though all the major mysteries in the series have been resolved—what happened to the parents, who the Other Eights are, who the note leaver is, and so on—the door has been left open for future adventures, even if those adventures may only ever live in your imaginations and mine.

  Thank you, once more, for all the joy you’ve given me.

  So this is goodbye . . . for now! I’m off to write more books, and you’re off to . . .

  Where are you off to?

  Oh, that’s right. I’ll tell you. You’re off to keep being great readers of books and you’re off to work hard in school because that’s the best way for you to take over the world.

  Thank you, thank you, forever thank you.

  Lauren (and Greg and Jackie too!)

  P.S. If you ever need me, you can always e-mail me through the contact link at www.laurenbaratzlogsted.com. As those of you who have written already know, I always write back.