Twitterpated

When I first read Nightseer by Laurell K. Hamilton, it was a different era. I wanted to find the author, to tell her it was a life-changing book. It was daring, a high fantasy book that refused to play by the "normal" rules of high fantasy. It was dark and edgy with a strong female lead and an ending that satisfied, but didn't rest it's laurels on happily ever after.
Back then, if I had wanted to convey those feelings to her, I would have gone down to the local library and seen if the reference desk had a tome of celebrity contact information. If she was in there, my letter would have taken a week getting to either her publisher or her agent. There it would sit for an indefinite period of time, maybe 2,weeks, maybe 6 months, before finally finishing it's journey to the esteemed Ms. Hamilton, who may or may not read it. I knew this routine, because my entire 7th grade English class wrote a letter to a celebrity of our choosing. I don't remember who I wrote to... Michael W. Smith, perhaps? (Most of my favorite authors in 7th grade were dead.) So I knew the process, as slow and ineffective as it was.
Fast forward to 2016. One of my fellow City Owl authors has convinced me I need to be on Twitter for marketing purposes. I was less than thrilled, wondering what on Earth could be so important in 140 characters or less. But I wanted to be an author, a real author, so I did it. In the back of my head, I was thinking that marketing was what I had a publisher and an agent for.
I was on twitter less than 24 hours when I got my first tweet from Laurell Hamilton, commiserating the necessary evil of social media marketing and how while it helps sell the book, it never writes a single word of the book. I promptly fanboyed... and got a smile back from her. From there in, it was a brave new world. I shared my publisher's weekly review with her and thanked her for the inspiration and encouragement. Way faster turn around than the seventh grade model.
So now I am twitter-pated, so to speak. I'm not convinced most people really pay attention to each other on twitter, but I'm going to give it a chance. The junk tweets may outnumber the @LKHamilton s but the latter make it totally worth it.
You can follow me @author_jbader.