Sylvia received a remarkable bit of post from an author. Have you received replies to fan letters?
Red letter day … can anyone top Elizabeth Bluemie's author-reader exchange? Photograph: Sarah Lee
Here, courtesy of Publishers Weekly, is the "best author letter ever". Children's writer Elizabeth Bluemle recounts the story of an unpublished manuscript of hers, Iris Spectacle: Accidental Private Eye, a "picture book … about a little girl who uses her nearsightedness to solve crime". It never made it into print, but when she saw a librarian looking for a book about girls who love their glasses, she sent off a copy – and never heard back. Until now, a decade later, when the little girl who received the manuscript wrote to say thank you.
"When I was eight I had already spent the previous six years of my life unable to see more than one foot away and even then not very clearly," wrote Sylvia, now 17. "With some great technology and fabulous doctors I was given these enormous larger-than-Harry-Potter glasses that barely fit on my face. And I could see, which you think would get me leaping for joy at figuring out the sky is blue, and that there actually is a sky, and all sorts of things. But I was terrified. The world was too big to fathom and I'd rather just make myself a small nook and stay there forever. And then I learned to read.
"But as I kept reading with my newfound vision I ran into a problem. There were great children's books about girls and how great they were and there were great books about boys with glasses and how great glasses were, but nobody seemed to have combined the two. Being an avid fan of both girls and glasses I begged my parents to get me books about girls who had glasses and loved them, like me. Of course, my parents are not literature experts and had nothing for me, so I enlisted the help of one extraordinary world-class children's librarian, Charlotte Rabbit."
The librarian sent her Bluemle's manuscript – "the coolest thing that had ever happened in my eight years" – and she read it again and again. "And I loved it. And I brought it to school and bragged about my connections in the literary world and basically felt invincible. Hopefully you remember the book but if not, you wrote it. Anyway, finally I had written proof of how cool girls with glasses are."
There's more and it's all wonderful, as is Bluemle's reaction: "This is a kid with moxie, and a way with language. I fully expect to host her at an author signing at the bookstore some day. And if that happens, I will still be glowing from this gift of a letter."
Did anyone else out there ever write to the authors they loved as a child? These days, of course, we can tweet them, or connect on Facebook – but it's not quite the same as a manuscript of your own, is it? Science fiction author Harry Turtledove went one step further when he learned that a fan of his alternate history novels had terminal cancer. After tracking down Turtledove via Reddit, a friend wrote to the author: "It is my duty as a friend to do whatever I can to fulfil Nachu's last wishes. Is it at all possible for you to send him copies of the remaining books in the series? I understand the risks involved in sending an advance copy of your books to him and I understand the potential copyright issues and backlash from publishers. That said, my friend needs some good luck and kindness to balance out the awful stream he's been on, and I couldn't imagine a better person for it than his favourite author."
Turtledove not only sent an early copy of his next novel, but "agreed to spoil the entire War series in a phone call (or possible face-to-face meeting) with Nachu", reports io9.
Wow. Sure beats Stephen King, who wrote in his second Dark Tower book that he had "received hundreds of 'pack your bags, we're going on a guilt trip' letters", including one from an 82-year-old grandmother with a year to live: "While she didn't expect me to finish Roland's tale in that time just for her, she wanted to know if I couldn't please (please) just tell her how it came out." To be fair to King, he says he would have given both the grandmother and the death-row inmate who "promised to take the secret to the grave with him" a summary of Roland's adventures, but he himself had no idea how things would turn out.
Please share your stories of the authors who have written back to you. The only fan letter I ever got around to writing as a child was to Enid Blyton, via the long-defunct address in the back of my ancient copy of Five Go to Smuggler's Top, and it was intercepted on its way out of the house by my parents, probably because she'd been dead for years.
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