Reader Mail Mondays: Text Edition
So I received a couple fan letters today. One of them asked me some questions that I'm happy to answer. The other was hate mail, which I'm happy to laugh at. :)
Let's get the questions out of the way first.
1) This might be a little personal, but the dedication for Vampire Fred is "For Angie, who loves to see boys kissing", and I was curious if there was a story behind that?
Kind of. I had quite a few beta readers for Fred, and well, one of them really didn't like the mystery subplot, thinking I should have concentrated solely on the romantic aspect of the plot because "the people who read these don't care about complex urban fantasy, they just want the romantic plots and that's all." If anyone's curious, the "people who read these" are, according to demographics, primarily women. Feel free to be insulted, I know I was when I heard that, and I'm a guy.
Anyway, rather than get pissed about it, I called my friend Angie, and told her about it, and we made a running gag of it, particularly while playing Left 4 Dead and Gears of War over XBox Live. I'd ask her to clear a room, and she'd come back with "Don't ask me to do that! I'm just a girl, thinking's too hard! I just want to see boys kissing!" And then we'd die because we'd be laughing too hard. So when it came time to do final edits on Fred, I decided to give her the dedication to further our inside joke, and well, that's why it's there. She found it hilarious, and still brings it up while we're playing Borderlands.
2) ...I also read your Inside Reader and saw a lot of TV shows. Are you not a big reader?
I do read, just not as much as I probably should. When Richelle Mead comes out with a new Georgina Kincaid, or there's a new Dresden Files paperback I'm all over it (I HATE having to wait a year), or a new Sookie Stackhouse novel. Other than that, yeah, a lot of my influences come from TV, movies, graphic novels, webcomics, even video games. I think part of it is just my generation, another that while I was studying at SUNY Oswego, the "cinematic" style of storytelling was pretty big at the time, so it was an influence to say the least. Apparently Americans watched more TV last year than they did any year before, so I'd like to think that it's affecting what modern readers expect out of a plot, or at least the ones who read popular fiction. I do occasionally read LitFic, but more often than not I dip into memoir if I'm going to read something outside of Urban Fantasy.
3) I'm glad to hear that House of Stone will be coming out in book form. If I send it to you, would you sign it?
I've actually been asked this quite a bit, really, mostly by friends, but the answer is... More than likely. Honestly, I'm not expecting a flood of books to show up at my house, or at a P.O. Box should I rent one specifically for this, but I figure if you're going to pay to ship the book to me and back to you, the least I can do is sign it and write you a little something, right?
And now, well, the hate mail. :)
This one, well, it was all over the place. There were a couple profanities and a lot more misspelled words, leading me to believe this person wasn't entirely sober during their trolling attempt. I was accused of ripping off 6 different authors, 5 of which I'd never heard of (though their names might've been grossly misspelled), and the 6th, well...
"ur dont have 1 orginal idea in any of ur books. You just wish u could rite a book like eragon now THATS fuckin original!"
Seriously, I nearly laughed myself to death when I read that. It made my day.
Let's get the questions out of the way first.
1) This might be a little personal, but the dedication for Vampire Fred is "For Angie, who loves to see boys kissing", and I was curious if there was a story behind that?
Kind of. I had quite a few beta readers for Fred, and well, one of them really didn't like the mystery subplot, thinking I should have concentrated solely on the romantic aspect of the plot because "the people who read these don't care about complex urban fantasy, they just want the romantic plots and that's all." If anyone's curious, the "people who read these" are, according to demographics, primarily women. Feel free to be insulted, I know I was when I heard that, and I'm a guy.
Anyway, rather than get pissed about it, I called my friend Angie, and told her about it, and we made a running gag of it, particularly while playing Left 4 Dead and Gears of War over XBox Live. I'd ask her to clear a room, and she'd come back with "Don't ask me to do that! I'm just a girl, thinking's too hard! I just want to see boys kissing!" And then we'd die because we'd be laughing too hard. So when it came time to do final edits on Fred, I decided to give her the dedication to further our inside joke, and well, that's why it's there. She found it hilarious, and still brings it up while we're playing Borderlands.
2) ...I also read your Inside Reader and saw a lot of TV shows. Are you not a big reader?
I do read, just not as much as I probably should. When Richelle Mead comes out with a new Georgina Kincaid, or there's a new Dresden Files paperback I'm all over it (I HATE having to wait a year), or a new Sookie Stackhouse novel. Other than that, yeah, a lot of my influences come from TV, movies, graphic novels, webcomics, even video games. I think part of it is just my generation, another that while I was studying at SUNY Oswego, the "cinematic" style of storytelling was pretty big at the time, so it was an influence to say the least. Apparently Americans watched more TV last year than they did any year before, so I'd like to think that it's affecting what modern readers expect out of a plot, or at least the ones who read popular fiction. I do occasionally read LitFic, but more often than not I dip into memoir if I'm going to read something outside of Urban Fantasy.
3) I'm glad to hear that House of Stone will be coming out in book form. If I send it to you, would you sign it?
I've actually been asked this quite a bit, really, mostly by friends, but the answer is... More than likely. Honestly, I'm not expecting a flood of books to show up at my house, or at a P.O. Box should I rent one specifically for this, but I figure if you're going to pay to ship the book to me and back to you, the least I can do is sign it and write you a little something, right?
And now, well, the hate mail. :)
This one, well, it was all over the place. There were a couple profanities and a lot more misspelled words, leading me to believe this person wasn't entirely sober during their trolling attempt. I was accused of ripping off 6 different authors, 5 of which I'd never heard of (though their names might've been grossly misspelled), and the 6th, well...
"ur dont have 1 orginal idea in any of ur books. You just wish u could rite a book like eragon now THATS fuckin original!"
Seriously, I nearly laughed myself to death when I read that. It made my day.
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