A Shout Out to My Peeps!

No, not the Easter candy - they're cute, but not terribly tasty.

I mean my readers. Those loyal strangers who have been reading my work for all these many years. The ones who have become such fans of the characters I've been creating, they email me all the time with lovely comments and encouraging things to say. Every time I finish a new novel, I worry incessantly. Will they like it? Will anyone like it? Is it okay - does it suck - did anyone out there even read it?

Then they start comin' in. Emails from people I've never met - who've never met me. Emails from all corners of the globe, telling me what they thought of the new story, thanking me for continuing to produce engaging tales with characters they can fall in love with.

Basically stroking my writerly ego :D

While I do try to reply to every email someone sends me, something I've been noticing lately among the writing community has me feeling even more thankful for My Peeps.

There are way too many writers out there -- really good writers -- who haven't, for one reason or a hundred, been able to find an agent for their work. It's a nasty business, and one that really does require an insane amount of luck to go along with that talent. Imagine you're in a maze of hallways and doors - with an urgent message that you need to get to ONE person in particular, only you don't know which person that is. So you're running through this maze, while all these other people are running around looking for a messenger. You don't realize it - as you run from person to person, trying to deliver your message - but the one person you need to find is running around in the opposite direction.

You run for years, constantly missing that person by just a few seconds, as they go through a door you just came out of.

And all the while you're running, you write more and more messages you need to deliver, but you still don't know which of these hundreds of other people the messages are meant for.

Too many of those messages go undelivered. And I see messengers giving up left, right and center. They put in years of hard work, writing novel after novel but getting rejection after rejection - and like me, all they want is to write and have someone read and enjoy their work. Most of us aren't expecting to be best sellers, or even make money - we just want to tell stories and have people read them.

That's why I feel so lucky to have My Peeps. I know what it means to write a novel and have hundreds of strangers read and enjoy them. Not just friends and family -( they actually don't see what I do at all )- but you people.

Yes, I'm trying to get published in the traditional sense. But you know what? I'm not gonna try forever. I'm a realist, and acknowledge just how niche my work really is. Character-driven science fiction isn't as popular as you would imagine. And that's okay.

Whatever happens - My Peeps will see and read my work. If I fail to get myself wedged between paperbacks on the shelves of Barnes & Nobel, I'll go back to what has served me well for so many years.

My Peeps.

So, to My Peeps - this beer's for you! :D

Oh -- and before I drift off and forget what I was going to say - Starting next Friday, I'm gonna try something new and hopefully entertaining. Every Friday I'm going to post as one of the characters in my books. Every Friday, a different character, going around the horn and back again. This is designed to, hopefully, give My Peeps more insight into what makes these characters tick. Some backstory, as it were. Little tidbits that don't get into the novels. It's an exercise, also, for fleshing out characters and getting to know them even better than I already do.

So, starting next Friday (except next week I'll have to post it on Thursday evening).

Maybe by then I'll have regained the feeling in my right index finger!