If you like the novel, but don't feel like or honestly can't afford sending along a dollar, do this for me instead: Tell your friends about the novel. Send them the Web site address. Download the novel and share it with your friends and other people you know. I want people to find and hopefully enjoy this novel — I think it's pretty good, and something most science fiction fans will get a kick out of. I'll be honest, I hope you'll tell your friends and send me a dollar. But ultimately it's up to you, the reader (ultimately, it's always up to you, the reader. I just recognize it).

Here's where to send payment — checks are always the safest way to go, though I suppose if you send a buck through the mail, it's not like you're out a bundle if it suddenly gets lost. Just wrap it in a sheet of paper to confuse the sticky-fingered postal types:

John Scalzi

310 Newman Court

Sterling, Va.

20164

USA

Put "re: Agent to the Stars" in the bottom left corner so I know what it's about.

I hope you enjoy reading Agent to the Stars as much as I did writing it. Thanks for dropping by — I look forward to hearing your comments (and getting your mail!) soon.

My acknowledgments are primarily to those friends of mine who willfully served as beta testers for Agent to the Stars, reading it in its first rough form, and sending me back notes on grammar errors, plot inconsistencies, factual boo-boos, and stylistic faux pas. Any that remain are of course my fault entirely; you should have seen what it looked like before they got to it. So hats off to Stephen Bennett, Mykal Burns, Jill Burnett Hart, Daniel Mainz and Kevin Stampfl.