One of the things that has really awed and hum­bled me is how many reader e-mails that I’ve got­ten for Spider’s Bite. I’m just esti­mat­ing here, but I think I can safely say that I’ve already got­ten more e-mails in the three weeks that Spider’s Bite has been out than I got for all of the Big­time books — com­bined.

And you know what the truly awe­some thing is? Almost all of the e-mails have been really, really pos­i­tive.

I thought that some folks might be dis­ap­pointed with Spider’s Bite since it is so much darker and grit­tier than the Big­time books, but every­one seems to be really enjoy­ing the world of Gin Blanco. In fact, sev­eral folks have writ­ten to tell me that they like Spider’s Bite more than they do the Big­time books. It really seems like peo­ple are respond­ing more to the dark and gritty reads these days, espe­cially in urban fan­tasy and para­nor­mal romance.

Of course, it’s not all been wine and roses. One lady e-mailed me to say that she didn’t think that I should use giants and dwarves in Spider’s Bite because she had watched some real­ity TV shows where peo­ple had made fun of real-life dwarves.  Um … okay.

I wrote her back and told her that giants/dwarves have long been pop­u­lar char­ac­ters in all kinds of fan­tasy books, that there are good and bad guy giants/dwarves in my books, and that I’m not mak­ing fun of real-life dwarves at all. She wrote me back and thanked me for explain­ing my posi­tion and said that she hadn’t read that many fan­tasy books — she was mostly going by what she had seen on TV.

She was very gra­cious and polite about the whole thing, but it still made me think — why do peo­ple e-mail authors in the first place?

Of course, I under­stand e-mailing and author to tell her how much you enjoyed her work. I do that myself, and I cer­tainly appre­ci­ate it as an author. Writ­ing is a hard, lonely busi­ness and get­ting a pos­i­tive e-mail from a reader really does brighten my whole day.

But I won­der about other e-mails that authors get — the ones that aren’t so nice. I haven’t got­ten any myself, but I’ve heard hor­ror sto­ries from other authors about peo­ple who e-mail them to com­plain about their books, their char­ac­ters, or what­ever. I’m not talk­ing about bad reviews — I’m talk­ing about per­sonal e-mails where peo­ple are basi­cally rip­ping an author up one side and down the other.

I’ve always won­dered why peo­ple do that kind of thing in the first place. Why waste your time e-mailing some­one to tell her how much you hated her lat­est book? Why not put the book aside and just go on about your life? Why not save your energy for the books/authors that you love?

I guess I just don’t under­stand why peo­ple use their pre­cious free time to do that sort of thing. Maybe it’s because I work at a news­pa­per. You would not believe the calls that we get — every sin­gle day. And you know what? Half of them are peo­ple call­ing to com­plain about some­thing. Why didn’t we do this story? Why was so-and-so on the front page? We’re Repub­li­cans, we’re Democ­rats, we don’t have the good sense that God gave a tooth­pick. And on and on and on … It’s like folks don’t under­stand that there are actual real-life peo­ple who work at the news­pa­per, peo­ple with feel­ings. Nobody likes to be yelled at — espe­cially before 9 a.m. But I have been — plenty of times. The sad thing is that it’s hap­pened so much that it doesn’t even bother me anymore.

And I’ve heard about authors being lam­basted like that. There’s so much neg­a­tiv­ity in the world already, so many bad things that hap­pen. I guess I don’t under­stand why peo­ple add to it this way.

Ah, well. Enough rumi­nat­ing for one day. To all the folks out there who do take the time to con­tact authors and tell us that you like our books, you guys are the rea­son that we write in the first place. You rock!

As for those other folks, maybe I don’t have the sense that God gave a tooth­pick — but at least I don’t go out of my way to be rude and mean to peo­ple like you do.