QUIET FANS

I don't know if I actually have fans of my books.

Well, that's not entirely true. I know quite a few people who are fans of my books. But those are all people I know. They have to be fans. Can you imagine having dinner with friends and over appetizers they say, "Not really digging your books, there, Lomer. Sorry."

I'm talking about people who only know me because of my books, people I've never met before. My wife works with someone whose daughter claims to be the biggest fan of Typo Squad, but I've never met the girl, so I can neither confirm nor deny her existence.

I know a lot of writers who excitedly share when a fan reaches out to them on Facebook. I know writers who have fan pages that other people (y'know, fans) have set up. And there's this one writer who is forever yammering on about how popular her books are and how much money she makes in book sales, so I assume she probably has a huge fan following. (I'm actually surprised she doesn't go on and on about that. Maybe she really only cares about the fame and the money.)

But I haven't had any of those experiences. If I have fans beyond my circle of family and friends, they're very quiet and don't communicate much. Maybe my stuff appeals to the introvert crowd.

Whatever the reason, if you are a fan of my work and you and this blog somehow cross paths, I just want to say thank you. And to tell you that you can say hello if you want to, I don't bite.

As a counterpoint to all of the above, to my knowledge, I don't really have haters either. Just as I've never received an email from a stranger saying, "Hey, loved the book," I've also never received one that said, "I've read your books. Kill yourself." So maybe no news is good news after all.