Last week when I sat down to write the combination newsletter/ blog, there was a temptation on my part to do the standard book announcement thing: Hey, you guys, my book is coming out in paperback on such and such a day. After all it was a book that many of my hardback readers—who also get the newsletter—had already read. But something nudged me to do more than that. And the response has been amazing.

I’ve said before that I consider my blog to be a window on my world, and the window this blog opened was the one about how kidney disease had suddenly appeared in our lives at the same time the book was coming into existence.

When I’m on this side of the screen, I’m usually thinking about the words I’m writing without necessarily thinking about the people reading those same words.

Let’s just say this week the people on the other side of my computer screen responded! They wrote with good wishes and prayers for Bill and for our family. But they also wrote about how their own families and lives have been affected by kidney disease.

When we were in the midst of our kidney failure crisis, it was easy to believe we were the only ones dealing with that issue. What I’ve learned this week is that kidney disease touches many, many lives and many of my readers’ lives as well. And most of the e-mails they sent to me required a personal response because they were personally written and personally received.

It took time to read and respond to those e-mails, but do you know what? It was time well spent.

I know from personal experience that most authors don’t respond to e-mails. I was going to tell you which ones, but as Thumper’s father says, “If you can’t say something nice …” So I deleted those sentences.

But this week, when those messages came in, they really touched me. Because people cared. My readers cared.

Readers are like beautiful flowers in a blooming in garden. And answering e-mails from readers amounts to watering those flowers.

So thank you for all those cards and letter, folks. They are truly appreciated.