Dear Readers:

Thanks to you and your support for our project over these past years, we are now so close to sharing  A Friend for Otter with you that we can almost taste it! (Stories taste better than you might expect, actually.)

We have very recently completed a painstaking line-by-line edit of the entire manuscript, and although we want to be modest, we love it! Now we have sent the manuscript out to a diverse group of advance readers to get their feedback on every aspect of the story, from the occasional type (although we hope we’ve gotten them all) to the insight and perspective that can be had only from people who have not spent years steeped in these characters and their stories. Now we must eagerly await that feedback, which is the final step before publication. We are very grateful to our advance readers, and we hope their input will help us further refine Otter’s story before we deliver it to you.

Otter is not the only kid in our lives, and a lot has happened in the Medlong-McCarthy family in the years since we began telling this story. All of us are a little older (although we can’t claim to be any wiser), Jesse is still trying to figure out how to make time for projects like this while working and helping to homeschool five kids, and Sylvia now answers to Ván (their middle name). In other words, life has gone on without regard to our progress on this project. And we expect it to keep going on afterward, even as we close this chapter on our work with Otter.

This process has taken us about five years, which is a lot longer than we expected. But you have stood by us and supported us at every step of the way. So once again, from the bottom of our hearts and inkwells, thank you for all of your patience, encouragement, and support as we have worked to make sure Otter’s story is the best we could craft. 

Happy reading!

Jesse and Ván (Sylvia) Medlong