A massive thank you to my lovely husband David Imrie who has supported me from day one, reading various drafts of Ignoring Gravity, re-reading, encouraging, suggesting, nagging and providing the vital mugs of tea. Also to my writing group, we are the four survivors: Alison Chandler, Lev D Lewis and Lisa Tiger. 2014 is the year we will all be published!

To the two creative writing tutors I worked with at Birkbeck. First, playwright Nina Rapi who read the first sentence I wrote about Rose Haldane and told me to write the novel. Second, novelist Shelley Weiner who actually never read Ignoring Gravity until 2014; for Shelley’s Birkbeck course I wrote a melodramatic novel which is now in a box. Thank you too to creative writing teachers Blake Morrison and Greg Mosse for inspiring me… and to Diana Ching, Vicky McFadyen, Gill Hancock, April Turner and everyone I’ve ever taken a creative writing class with, thanks for your feedback.

To all my friends and family who have rallied, supported and cajoled over the years and never said ‘What do you mean it isn’t published yet!’ To my sister Linda Sheppard and brother Ian Danby who quietly encouraged me over the years. To my friends Janet Clark, Mandy Huggins, Vivienne Resch, Josephine Collins and Pamela Buckley who watched as I became a journalist even though I wanted to write stories. A special thanks to Ginny Sanderson, retired social worker who handled adoptions for decades, and who checked the ms for accuracy.

Without my loyal blog followers, this would not have happened. It was your enthusiasm for Ignoring Gravity as you read it in instalments online, in good Charles Dickens fashion, which gave it the oxygen it needed to be noticed. Thank you all wherever you are: in the UK, USA, India, Australia, New Zealand, France, Turkey, Canada, Germany, Singapore, Brazil, Korea, Gibraltar, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, UAE, Philippines and all points in between.

To my fantastic publicity team at Nicky Stephen Marketing including Nicky Stephen, Jane Cowan and Paul Burrows; film producer Simon Cooper and sound director Ich Mowatt for producing such excellent videos. And to actress Vicki Shearing for a wonderful voiceover on the book trailer. Vicki, you ARE Rose!

To Dea Parkin and her team at Fiction Feedback, thanks for the copy-editing and the support.

Ignoring Gravity is for my mother and father, who sadly are not here to see it.