Twenty Questions for Gloria Page 22

  I ease it out.

  The photo on the front shows a sheer-sided gorge with a narrow path winding its way along the rock face, and a ribbon of white-water river far, far below. In the strip of clear blue sky at the top of the picture, the text says:

  El Caminito del Rey, Andalusia.

  My hand trembles so badly I almost drop the card as I turn it over.

  I only saw his handwriting once—on the “happy places” slips he showed me after we’d drawn Bryher—but I’d recognize it anywhere.

  Four words. One underscore. And a question mark.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Way back at the beginning, this novel was going to be called The Fourth Wish and was going to feature a genie. While I was still roughing out a plan for the book, I visited Scissett Middle School, near Huddersfield, in West Yorkshire, England, to run some creative writing workshops. While I was there, I invited the students to enter a competition by answering the question: If you were granted three wishes, what would you wish for? The prize? I would choose the answer I liked the most and name one of the characters in my novel after the winning student.

  In the end, I picked two winners: Jade Ellis (“the ability to see myself in the future so that I could work on the things that I did not like”) and Tierney Rhodes (“to be able to see my future so I could see if there is anything that I would change”). And so the fictional Gloria Jade Ellis and her best friend, Tierney, were born. The novel altered beyond recognition on its journey to becoming Twenty Questions for Gloria—no genie, for one thing, and no time travel—but the 243 wishes produced by the 81 students who entered the competition were an invaluable part of the process. So I am very grateful to those young people at Scissett and to their brilliant English teacher, Maura Ryan (who also has a character named after her), for such enthusiastic support.

  My heartfelt thanks also go to my agent in the UK, Stephanie Thwaites, for steering this novel back on course when I’d taken it walkabout, and to my London editor, Mara Bergman, and my New York editors, Wendy Lamb and Dana Carey, for their incisive notes during redrafting.

  Finally, and most importantly, I am grateful to the two people who read this novel before anyone else and told me what they thought of it: my wife, Damaris, and my daughter, Polly.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Martyn Bedford’s first novel for young adults, Flip, won multiple awards in Britain and has been translated into eight languages. His second novel for young adults, Never Ending, was nominated for the Carnegie Medal. He has also written five novels for adults, including The Houdini Girl. A former journalist, he teaches creative writing at Leeds Trinity University. Martyn lives in West Yorkshire, England, with his wife and two daughters. Learn more about him at martynbedford.com.

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