Fan Letters

"Hands down, the biggest thrill is to get a letter from a kid saying, I loved your book. Will you write me another one?" (Kate DiCamillo) 


Have you ever written an author a fan letter? When I first started writing back before the internet made communication instant and easy, I would get a few letters from readers sent to the publisher and then forwarded on to me. I got the most letters while I was writing my young adult fiction. A few times, a teacher would read one of my books to her class and then every child in her class wrote me a letter telling what he or she liked about the book. Such fun to read those letters and imagine the children listening to my stories and being introduced to the fun of reading. 

Now that I'm writing inspirational fiction for adults, I still get the occasional old fashioned letter from a reader, but more often I get e-mails from readers who contact me from my website. And I enjoy every one of those e-mails. Well, almost every one of them. Sometimes a reader takes me to task for some part of my book they didn't like or a mistake or mess-up I made. It's good to have readers to keep me straight. So even those e-mails can make me smile.

But my smile is a little broader when the readers are telling me they "couldn't put my book down." Or one man said I'd helped him discover the fun of reading again. Another reader told me that she did put my book down in order to go look up a Bible story my character mentioned. Fun fan letters or e-mails to get.

Back when I was writing the young adult fiction, I once had a young reading friend who wrote me like a pen pal. I wonder about her sometimes now that she's grown up. One thing I certainly never expected with the books I'm currently writing was to get a fan letter from a ten-year-old boy, but I did. Not a letter through the mail or an e-mail either. This kid was at one of the churches where my husband's group was singing a few weeks ago. I didn't get to be there because I have to sit with Mom on most Sundays now. But Chandler told my husband that he'd read every one of my Shaker books and then he found some paper to write me a note that Darrell forgot to give me. I stumbled across the note last week and of course, it made me smile and wish I'd been there to meet my young fan. 

Words can encourage or they can wound. Letters or e-mails from readers are usually encouraging to me. Chandler's note certainly was. I'm encouraged any time someone writes me and tells me he or she has read my books and are praying for me. One reader said she prayed for every author when she opened up his or her book. What a powerful gift to give someone she'd never actually met in person!

So thank all of you for your encouragement and for reading my words. And if you've ever sent me an e-mail or made a comment here, I promise to do my best to answer you. One thing you can know for sure. If you've ever written an author to tell that writer  you liked his or her book, you made someone smile. No doubt about it. 

The First Valentine

Hi, everybody. Hope you're not too stuffed with chocolate candy after Valentine's Day yesterday. Our preacher was telling us the origin of Valentine's Day in church today. Br. Fred says that back many moons ago, around 268 A.D. in the Roman Empire, it was decided that men should not marry before they entered the Roman army. But a priest named Valentine performed so many of the prohibited weddings that the Caesar had him imprisoned. Then legend has it that Valentine wrote his faithful congregation a letter from prison expressing his love for them and signed it "Your Valentine."

Not everybody agrees with this bit of Valentine history, so you can go out and do your research and make up your own mind, but I like the story. The day wasn't officially established until the end of the 5th century when Pope Celasius declared February 14 as Valentine's Day. However it was the 19th century before it became the custom to send flowers, candy and cards to the one you loved. I'm sort of glad they started sending the cards. I've always thought the Valentine's Day parties at elementary schools were the best. I still have a box of Valentines somewhere that my oldest son got when he was in third or fourth grade. It's a day when everybody can feel loved and popular.

Since we're talking about popular, I've heard from two people this week who say they have come back to overstuffed e-mail boxes. One, who was out of electricity and thus off line for eight days, said she had over 500 messages waiting in her inbox. Another who had been on a vacation came home to over 200 messages. Wow! Now that's a couple of popular girls. The neat thing was they both took time to read my newsletter I sent out a couple of weeks ago. I'm honored.

And now since we're talking about being honored, I just went out to get some information off the website for the Christian Book Expo where I'll be attending the Evangelical Christian Publishers' Association award banquet for Christian Book of 2009. In case you haven't been reading my other entries, The Outsider was chosen as one of the five finalists in fiction. (Yeah, yeah, I know. Any reason to repeat that, right? But I am excited.) Anyway when I get out there to the website, www.christianbookexpo.com, there's my picture right up there with all those famous authors on one of the pages, events I think. Imagine that!

But the really funny thing is that it's a picture one of my Sunday school kids took of me last year when we were hiking out here on the farm at Panther Rock. The kids love to go down there with me and I always take one picture like a portrait of them in the place of their choice to give to them later. So last year one of them wanted to take a picture of me. It's not a bad picture. I have my everyday clothes on and I've been hiking for a couple of miles with a bunch of teenagers who love to splash in the creek. So I'm not beauty parlor neat for sure. But I posted it on my website and I guess the Expo people must have lifted it from there. I can't wait to tell my Sunday School kid that his picture is out there on the web. He'll feel like a famous photographer. And I guess it's a good lesson for me. Be careful what you put out on the internet.

Of course I already knew that. Especially with e-mails. When you're writing a letter by hand, you have time to think about it while you're stuffing it in an envelope and putting it in the mailbox. If you've said some unwise things, your better judgement might kick in in time. Alas, with e-mails, they disappear in an eyeblink as soon as you hit that send button. Even while you're yelling, "Wait! Wait! Come back." So if you misspell words, if you sound off, if you moan and groan, you might want to take a deep breath and read it over again before you send it. I don't sound off (much) or moan and groan (only in my private journal) but I have sent out some misspelled words. And I hate that. Sometimes they are only typos, but there's no calling them back after you hit that send button. Thank goodness with the blog, it lets me edit if I see a mess up after I've hit the publish button.

What I really need to remember is that everybody messes up and the best part is that most readers of e-mails and blogs and newsletters forgive you for being human. Hope all your mess-ups this week are minor and something you can laugh about. One thing we can all count on is forgiveness if we seek it from the Lord.