Email From An Idol

Well I just had a bit of excitement. Some background first.

One of the reasons I started writing in the first place as a teen is because there was a serious dearth of decent teen fiction out there. The only YA author I found worth reading at the time was L.J. Smith.  This was largely because she recognized the fact that teens aren’t stupid and aren’t purely ruled by hormones (which her fellow YA authors didn’t seem to grasp). Started with The Vampire Diaries when I was 12 and then devoured everything she ever wrote. Between books (the woman isn’t inhuman, she couldn’t crank them out as fast as I could read them), I got bored and started writing myself. Never looked back on that either. The last time one of her books was published (not counting reprints) was back in (I think) 1998–the year I graduated high school. Lord that feels like forever ago. As a devoted member of Circle Daybreak, I’ve waited patiently for the last ten years to see if she’d put something else out and my patience has finally been rewarded! She’s writing again! Nothing’s out yet, but it’s only a matter of time. It’s proof that a determined fanbase can get results in the publishing world.

Anyway, the excitement part is that her new website is up (it’s linked from her name earlier). So I thought it was a good time to dash her an email letting her know how much I loved her books and what an influence she was on my writing early on. The exciting part was that she already emailed me back! A long, thoughtful, lovely reply! I was flattered. My husband is trying to figure out why I have the squealies about it, but hey! This is somebody I absolutely idolized as a young adult, someone on my list of people I’d like to meet someday. So yeah, it’s really darn cool! Totally worth squealies. I just had to share. It’s really cool when we get confirmation that our heroes and idols are just regular folks like us. Particularly when they take the time out to keep in touch with fans. I really hope that someday when I’m published (yeah note the confidence), I’m that good at keeping up with fanmail.