Fan Mail

Patty here…

I love fan mail. I will forever be amazed that readers interrupt their busy schedules to tell me that they enjoyed one of my books. I especially like the notes that begin like this: “I’ve never written to an author before, but I just had to tell you…” I got another one of those just a few days ago. This fan had read something about COVER YOUR ASSETS in the New York Times and decided to give my book a try because a reviewer had compared my style to Janet Evanovich’s. I know the email was authentic, because my mother doesn’t have a computer.

At times, especially when deadlines loom large, authors lead solitary lives, spending hours typing away at the exclusion of everything and everyone else. It’s comforting when fans let us know that we’re not working in total obscurity.

That email got me thinking. I always send a thank you note to the host/hostess the day after a party. I even thank the guy at Vons who scans the price on my tomatillos, but I rarely email other authors to tell them how much I enjoyed their work. I’ve decided to start doing that more often.

My friend Desiree turned me on to a book by Carolyn See called Making a Literary Life: Advice for Writers and Other Dreamers. See talks about her admiration for E.M. Forester and how his novels, A Room with a View and The Longest Journey, changed her life. She regrets never telling him that before he died.

See writes:

There had been months, even years, when I could have written him a note to say thank you. Thank you for reminding me I’m not totally alone of this earth; thank you for teaching me about morality and passion in a way I can respect; thanks for teaching me that profound looks better against a background of violets that “spot the grass with azure foam."

Maybe he would have written me back. Maybe, in Cambridge, even with all his distinguished friends, he would have liked to have thought of a housewife in California reading his books with so much love and respect and trying to get what he was trying to say.

Reflecting back on her experience, See recommends that you write one “charming note” to somebody whose work you admire (not necessarily an author, but that would be nice), and that you do it five days a week for the rest of your life. That’s a worthy idea but a tall order especially since reading a book a day is impossible for me and finding somebody in the general population to admire isn’t all that easy, either.

Some may think that writing fan mail is risky business. It’s like being the first one in a relationship to use the L-word and then suddenly realizing that the feeling is so-not-reciprocated. But life is so-not a dress rehearsal, just ask Carolyn See.



I used to believe that famous authors were too busy to read or too jaded to appreciate fan mail, but I’ve changed my mind about that. My friend Barb actually got a lovely letter from John Irving (The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany) in response to a note she sent him, a critique of one of his novels, no less.

I don’t have as much time to read these days as I used to, but at the moment my bookmark is in Susan Kandel’s first novel, I Dreamed I Married Perry Mason. I was on the “Hip Chicks Packing Heat” panel with her at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books a few months ago and found her to be smart, charming, and funny. I’m halfway through the book and loving it, so I emailed her a "charming note" to gush.

Here’s the set-up. Cece Caruso has a contract to write a biography of Earl Stanley Gardner (Author of Perry Mason, etc.). While riffling through the archives, she finds a forty-year-old letter addressed to Gardner from a man serving a life sentence for murdering his wife. He claims he’s innocent (of course) and asks Gardner (a real-life lawyer) for help. Cece thinks that pursuing the letter angle might help breathe life into her stilted prose. When she discovers that the man is alive and still in prison, she asks for and is granted permission to interview him. As you may have guessed, mayhem ensues. The writing sparkles. The characters are well drawn. The set-up is fresh and clever. The heroine is smart, funny, and charming, just like the author.

So what’s your take on fan mail/charming notes? Love em? Hate em? Write em? Or not?

Patty

P.S. I’m posting this on Saturday because tomorrow morning at o-dark-thirty I’m leaving for a sailing trip on the Maine coast. (Har! Shiver me timbers!) Since there are no cyber cafes in Penobscot Bay or the Gulf of Maine, I’ve invited Louise Ure to guest blog next Monday. She’s written a wonderful book called FORCING AMARYLLIS, which was just nominated for a Shamus award for Best First Novel. I assured her that we NakedAuthors have no rules about posting...hmmm...perhaps you should stay tuned.

Fair winds!