Are two of the nicest reader reactions I’ve ever received.

One was for the first book in my Lonesome George Chronicles, The Big Bang, which is being re-issued this year by Conservatarian Press, run by my amiga, Jamie K. Wilson.

The response “You Bastard” was courtesy of one of my long-time friends, Lyle Smythers.  An accomplished actor, he is also a novelist (you can find his books on Amazon.  Not my usual genre, but well-written and creative as heck).  Friends  for the last several decades, we are two very different people in almost every way (politically, socially, etc).  Yet those differences never impeded our support of each other’s art.

So when I saw the subject line of his email (the aforementioned questioning of my actual parentage), I thought “That’s high praise.”  I was correct, for Lyle went on to say he’d enjoyed the novel, which is not the sort of thing he normally reads, and he was particularly struck by how fairly I’d treated the characters with whom he knew I disagreed.

The “Damn You” email arrived this past Thursday.  It was from one of the early readers of the third book in my Cthulhu, Amalgamated series.  The as yet-unpublished book is called The Break Room of a 1000 Nightmares.  

My correspondent was Professor Meg Blair, who has been so helpful to me as an editor and friend.  She’s also a fine writer, and I’ve been nagging her to get to work on her novel.  I’ve read the first–and, alas, only– chapter in her novel, and it (much like Mr. Smythers’) in a very compelling way took me into a world I’d not experienced before and wanted to know more about.

Her praise was brief, but heartwarming.   “Damn You,” went the subject, and the text explained, “You made me cry–again.  This was awesome.”

Yeah, that was a great email to receive.