Letters to the author

Have you ever written to an author? It’s the norm these days, or at least emailing or Tweeting them is. But it’s not that long since contacting a writer meant applying pen to paper, then stamp to envelope, then feet to pavement until you reached the postbox. Real effort, and not that many people did it. Publishing in the old days, before writers all had ‘web presences’, could be a lonely business, the only real feeling for how your book had been received coming from newspaper reviews and sales figures. Yet when contact is made there can be moments of beauty. There can also be moments of terror, and indeed of bafflement.

I’ve been lucky in that my books seem to attract only positive correspondence. Those who hate them stick to Amazon, including the reviewer who said that a better title for my first novel would have been ‘&”Andrex” — ‘cos that’s where it’s going’”.