I read the emails readers send me and respond to same. I also read the comments on my blog on both the website and my Facebook page, responding where a reply seems to be in order.  (Initially I wrote “called for” but prepositions are not to end sentences with.  So endeth the grammar lesson for the day!)

Some of the e-mails leave me inspired — like the one from the guy who wrote a couple of weeks ago to say that reading about Beau’s struggle with sobriety caused him to seek treatment. That one put tears in my eyes.

Some leave me floored — like the one from woman who wrote objecting to the fact that Ali Reynolds’s twin grandchildren are named Colin and Colleen which, according to her was a cutsie Fifties style of naming.  I replied—politely and with some humor, I thought — by explaining writers write what they know. As a product of those selfsame fifties, I came from a family of seven children where a clear majority came with J names — Janice, Jeannie, Judy, Jim, and Janie. (Where Arlan and Gary came from, I have NO idea!)  My character naming critic immediately responded by sending me a list of “acceptable Irish names” along with their accompanying meanings. Wait, wait, wait folks.  I’m the writer here.  I get to give my characters their names.  I did not write back a second time.  My rule of thumb is to respond politely once, but after that … it’s anybody’s guess.

And some of the emails leave me downright confused.  On the one hand I have a collection of e-mails from people saying they won’t read any more of my books because I’m obviously promoting the “gay lifestyle.” I confess that in my books, as in real life, there are various gay people who are a: living their lives and b: doing their jobs. (Ali’s wonderful majordomo, Leland Brooks, comes to mind.) What goes on in those characters’ private lives is really none of my business and none of my readers’ business, either. The same holds true for my heterosexual couples.  For instance, something is obviously going on in Joanna Brady and Butch Dixon’s bedroom because they have one kid and are closing in on another at the moment, but I didn’t see it happen, and neither did you because I’m not in the business of writing show-and-tell sex scenes.

The irony is, I also have a collection of e-mails accusing me of writing books that are homophobic.  (Lesson to self. As President Abraham Lincoln once said, “You can’t please all of the people all of the time.” Or, as Ricky Nelson sang in Garden Party: You see, you can’t please everyone, so you’ve got to please yourself.)

So this week I received an e-mail that gave me a brand new perspective on all this backing-and-forthing.  It came from a woman in North Carolina who said she knew she was gay from the time she was nine years old. She also said she’d been married twice and divorced twice—once to and from a man and once to and from a woman. She concluded by saying, however, that if she ever met a guy like Butch Dixon, she’d marry him on the spot.  So there you are.  That one made me LOL, as the current saying goes.

Last night, at an event here in Tucson, I met a woman I’ve known casually for years. In all that time I’ve never asked or even thought “Is she or isn’t she?” (See paragraph four above—not my business.) At the end of the evening, she (please pardon my pronoun confusion here) introduced Bill and me to her “wife.” I’d say they’re both in their early sixties. They’re clearly happy to be newlyweds and still in the process of sorting out last name issues.

Bill and I congratulated them and left with the hope that they’ll live happily ever after.

That’s not promoting the “gay lifestyle,” so much as it is living and letting live.

It occurs to me that there’s not nearly enough of living and letting live going around these days.

Try it; you might like it.