This letter is for everyone who likes my book – and also for those who might not.
Thank you for reading it.
Thank you for spending hours of your life with a ninja detective, a Jesuit priest, a weapons dealer, a crotchety maid, and a kitten whose name I won’t tell you for most of the novel.
I wanted to thank you here because I won’t be responding to any reviews in public. That doesn’t mean I don’t care.
I do.
In fact – and this may surprise you – if you read my book, I appreciate you, whether or not you liked it. Because you read it. You gave it a chance.
I would love it if everyone loved my book, but I don’t expect that any more than I think I’ll find a live unicorn in my bathtub. (Hey – it could happen!)
Readers’ tastes vary – and while I hope that many, many people are fans of Hiro, Father Mateo, and The-Kitten-Who-Won’t-Be-Named, if you’re not among them I do not blame you for it. (I might suspect we have different taste in books, but I trust you’ll forgive me for that particular notion.)
This is easy for me to say at the moment, since the book isn’t out yet. That’s part of the reason I’m writing this letter now. Authors catch a lot of flack on the ‘net and in social media for reacting badly to negative comments about their work.
I’ve made a commitment to an alternate path.
To remember that you, the reader, are the reason why I do this. To remember your tastes may not be the same as mine. And to appreciate you – regardless of your opinions – because the fact that you gave my book a chance makes you special in my eyes.
So, that. And thank you for reading.
And for those who might like something a little more humorous, I’m at the Debutante Ball today, along with some aquatic friends who have pretty nice claws of their own.