It's September 30, 2001, a few weeks after the tragedy at the World's Trade Center and the Pentagon. As a born and bred New Yorker who has lived 30 minutes from Washington D.C. for the last 20+ years, the impact on my family and myself has been intense. But I know there isn't a person in the country that doesn't feel the same way, no matter where they were born or live now. After the attacks, I seriously doubted I'd get the zine formatted and produced, and besides, how important was it anyway? Then a tornado ripped through our neighborhood less than a week ago. Our home was unscathed, fortunately, but we lost power for days.

But after 4 years writing the zine, I wanted it finished, in print, complete, done, fini. More important to me than the story was the desire to get Suzan's wonderful illos in the hands of S/H fans. Having a chance to work with such a beautiful body of art that turned this story into an illustrated novel in the most classic sense has been a terrific and challenging experience. And it's brought me full circle to a day, almost 5 years ago, when Suzan showed me Starsky's "walk around the porch" from Class in Crime. As I fell hopelessly in love, she said that if I ever wrote SH, she would be happy to illustrate it. Who could turn down such an offer?

After the years of waiting for the novel to be finished, I was lucky Suzan hadn't lost interest in it. When she asked if I'd be willing to incorporate the illos into the text so they would fit in organically with the story, I thought it was a great idea. I still do, in spite of the problems it created for this novice zine producer. Hey, if it was easy, anyone could do it.

It's amazing to see your ideas take visual shape and form. I was stunned when I realized that Suzan had produced 21 separate black and white drawings, plus a color cover and a color back cover. She also produced other preliminary drawings and sketches. These were also beautiful, and I'm grateful that she's let me reproduce some of them. The interior color illo is an unfinished cover prototype and there are early sketches of the guys. I'm rarely without words, but when I look at the portfolio Suzan produced I'm speechless. I know you'll love these lovely, haunting illos as much as I do.

Suzan is largely responsible for my getting into SH fandom in the first place, as is my dear friend KC who plied me with zines. I'm forever grateful, as I've made some of my dearest friends in this fandom. The encouragement, stimulation, creative juices, and just plain love I've gotten from folks like Rosemary, Kath Moonshine, Kelly, Glow, Martha, Linda, Cindy L., SHaron, Solo, Viv, Janie, Barb. D., Linda R., Lucy, Elaine, Paladin, Mer, Suz, Janice, Mel and Cherrel (to name just a few), and listsibs on our discussion list, VenicePlace -- some of whom I've never met -- is amazing. It keeps me going and more important, it keeps me laughing.

Big love to my tireless and fabulously nit-picky editors -- Barb D, Elaine H., and Kath Moonshine. Any errors in this zine are strictly my own. They did an incredible job -- and in Barb's case, multiple times -- on a humongous manuscript. Big thanks to my printer, Sandy. It's great working with a slash fan who has access to high tech printing equipment and has skill and patience besides.

And a special big thanks and giant love goes out to my perpetually cheerful, encouraging, and upbeat roommate, Rosemary. (I may kill her for those traits some day!) But the biggest thanks and most special love are reserved for my partner, Anne, who no doubt rues the day the words "Starsky and Hutch" were uttered in our house. She's a saint, that woman. (You think it's easy living with a saint?)

To encourage new forms of publication that guarantee greater accessibility to all fans, I support simultaneous publication. Within a month of the paper release (in other words, when I recover from ZebraCon [okay, so it took 4 months!]), TE will be available on the web as an e-zine, as downloadable files for PDAs and Palm Pilots, on CDs, and on loan from the Starsky & Hutch Lending Library.

It's almost 6 AM and I haven't been to bed yet. All night formatting is a tradition in zine publication Martha and Linda tell me, so I guess I'm carrying on in a fine tradition. I'm too tired to say for sure! In 4 hours I hope to be printing this thing, holding it in my hand and calling it a zine.

Please join us for lots of SH fun in October of 2002, at SHareCon in Maryland. And if you'd like to join our insane, but friendly, on-line neighborhood, VenicePlace, just drop me a note.

Now I need to edit this overly-long intro, and try to catch a few winks before printing starts. Thanks to everyone who's waited so patiently for this zine.

Flamingo