You folks have heard me go on and on about how much I appreciate my readers. Well, get over it because I’m no stopping. I’m feeling like warmed over garbage today so I haven’t written a whole lot. I’ve been lying around going through emails and letters…um by the way, I love letters! I even received a few sketches depicting my characters, love them! You guys are talented.


Anyway, I’m chatting with my girlfriend/fellow author while I’m going through my mail. She began complaining about unsupportive fans. Now, imagine me at this point looking like a deer caught in headlights. What exactly is an unsupportive fan?


Apparently, an unsupportive fan is someone who simply reads your work strictly for its content; they don’t really interact or care if you live or die just as long as you keep them entertained.


*Crickets*

What the hell!?


Here’s the deal. She’s going through a rough patch with a divorce and ailing parents. Hence, she’s had to reprioritize her life. She can’t devote the same amount of time to her projects. Her publisher and fans are pissed! Mind you, all of her projects are current so the publisher should be happy, right? Wrong! They want new storylines…like now. I told her to find a new publisher…nuff said. Then I explained that her fans don’t understand what she’s going through or who she really is because she hasn’t shown them anything beyond the super strong author who’s always in control.


First, no one is “always” or “never” anything. We’re human. We have core values but we make adjustments to our lives as the situation demands. Second, stop calling fans “unsupportive”. That really bothers me. Again, it goes back to my first reason.


I don't completely grasp the relationship some authors have with their readers. Hell, my readers are saints for listening to me drone. But I know this much: Regardless of who you are, everyone goes through the same BS. Love, hurt, jubilation, victories and failure; one can’t exist without being touched by these fundamental facts of life. They come in differing sequences and intensities and forms but they happen to all of us.


My last bit of advice to her was to get online and talk to her folks. Let them know why she disappeared. Side note, she received hate mail , real bloody hate mail, from her readers for ‘abandoning’ her site while she tended to her sick parents for a week. I read some of her mail…damn, it was tough.


I love my readers!!!


* I retell this event with her authorization. :)