Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Who Reads About Garison?

I still don't know who's reading about Garison Fitch. I can check my account at Amazon and see that—this month—I have sold several copies of my books about Garison (and even a couple copies of the books about his grandson ["All the Time in Our World"]) but other than the one friend on Facebook who told me she bought a copy, I have no idea who these people are.

Yes, I realize that's SOP for most authors. John Grisham probably gets a lot of fan mail, but I doubt that he gets a letter from every one of the millions of readers each of his books have.

Still, I'd like to know. Part of it is curiosity. I'd like to know where they heard about my book and whether they would recommend it to a friend and if they prefer Kindle or actual paper. I'd like to ask those questions.

There's another aspect to it all, though. I wrote and re-wrote "First Time: The Legend of Garison Fitch" for over a decade. And then, there was the publishing mishap, followed by another majore re-write and the adventure in self-publishing. That was followed (many years later) by my foray into publishing with Kindle (which has worked out better than I ever imagined!).

Over that time, and through it all, Garison has become something more than an imaginary character to me. My brain knows he's a fictional person, but I've also gotten to know him so well that when writing "Lost Time" or other, unpublished, works wherein Garison appears I have occasionally run into walls. Not that I don’t know how to write for Garison, but that I know too well! I write a bit of dialogue, then think, “Garison wouldn’t say that.” Or, “Garison wouldn’t say it that way.” Or, I’ll put Garison into a situation that I know he wouldn’t get into.

Same with Heather. I know these characters so well that writing about them is less like writing fiction and more like writing biography. I think part of why I want to hear from people who have read my books is I want to know if they Garison and Heather (and Sarah, Edward, Marianne, Bat, Jody and Joe and Ellen) seem as real to them.

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