First of all, I read a great story on author Brian James's blog today about how he responds to every letter/email he gets from readers. Really great story, that makes me even more obsessed about forgetting things in the seat pockets of airplanes.
I'm like him. I respond to every one, too. Even the ones that have made me uncomfortable. Like yesterday, for example... I was at a party, and I got an email on my phone from a reader who wanted me to explain a particular sentence in one of my novels because she thought the sentence was grammatically and syntactically incorrect. She loved the book, though. And wrote some very well-worded emails to me with expert grammar and syntax. But she just didn't "get" one sentence.
Attention: All of my sentences are perfect.
No fragments.
Ever.
As authors, too, I'm sure there are others out there who have had the experience of "chatting" with aspiring writers who are consumed with bitterness and hatred toward literary agents and the American publishing industry. So they spend a lot of their time spewing venom about how corrupt, bereft of talent, and inbred literary agents and editors are... and then you read a page or so of what they've been trying to get repped or published and you're, like, holy crap, I've read better stuff from heroin-addicted gradeschoolers.
You know?
So, the latest one of these, the angry and unpublished, tells me how he's totally fed up with American publishers and talentless American literary agents, and could I give him any advice for finding a foreign literary agent or editor to publish his work.
I told him he should build a rocket ship in his back yard.
Oh yeah.
That's what life is like.
Exactly.
That could be a picture of ME, wearing a tie, passing off my latest work to my agent, an absolute Black Belt in multitasking, who can pen out my latest contract with her right hand while handing over a wad of cash with her left, all the while, (if you look closely) she is speed-reading and falling in love with my manuscript. Good thing her phone's not ringing, or she'd sprout a third arm from her sternum on the spot.
