Swifties is the moniker given to devoted Taylor Swift fans who follow her anywhere—from city to city and even country to country—attending her concerts.  It turns out I have a few devoted fans of my own.

Several years ago, I did a late-morning event in Sun City, Arizona.  When it came time to sign books, Teresa, one of the women standing in line, told me she had driven from Yuma that morning to attend the event.  Yuma is a close to three hours away from Sun City. I ended up inviting her to lunch at my favorite Mexican restaurant in the Phoenix area, La Piñata.  Over lunch she related a lot of her personal history, including the fact that the trip to Sun City was her first solo adventure after suffering a stroke.  We’ve stayed in touch ever since.

Then there’s Barbara Reed.  I met her first at a signing in California.  Huntington Beach maybe?  She was a jazz singer/song-writer who had given up all that in exchange for serving as her ailing husband’s primary caregiver. She turned up at events over the years where we were able to grab a snack together afterwards.  Then two years ago, when I was in Tucson for Left Coast Crime and the Tucson Festival of Books, she drove over from California where we spent a couple of hours chatting in the hotel’s lobby bar and restaurant. By then she was a widow who was trying to find a footing in her new reality.  

I’m happy to report that she’s done just exactly that.  Barbara Reed is back to singing and song writing again.  There’s a new man in her life, and her voice has re-emerged in every sense of the word.  Her new album, Still Lucky, goes on sale at the end of November.

What brought all this to mind?  This past Sunday I received an email from Charlotte, a fan in Virginia.  She said she’d received her copy of the newsletter and was setting out that morning to drive from there to Bellingham, Washington, to attend Saturday’s upcoming signing.  Drive that far for a signing?  Are you kidding me?

She wasn’t kidding at all!  She and a male companion, Brian, along with their dog, Hoover, are en-route, camping all the way.  They spent Sunday night in Ohio and Monday night in Iowa.  Last night they tried to stay at a RV camp in Deadwood, South Dakota.  Turns out that, although there were some campers still there, the place was actually closed, so they decamped, as it were, and went to a hotel.  From a mystery writer’s point of view, camping at a dead campground in DEADWOOD!!! sounds like a bad idea.  But as of this morning they’re still on track for Saturday, and we’re planning on getting together for an early dinner before the signing.

And then there’s a guy named Scott Bowers.  I’ve never met him.  All I know about him is that he’s a devoted fan.  He wrote to me some time ago, back in August or September, asking how he could obtain copies of ALL the Beaumont books.  I referred him to Brick & Mortar Books in Redmond, Washington. Yesterday, when I went there to sign copies of The Girl From Devil’s Lake, they brought me the box of books destined for Scott Bowers.  Turns out they were missing one—Beaumont #1, Until Proven Guilty. I checked on that this morning.  UPG was just reprinted and there are now 1000 copies of that book sitting in the warehouse.  My editor is having one fast-tracked to me, I’ve told the folks at Brick & Mortar to hold up on sending that box until we have the missing book in hand.

So all of this is to say that I’m grateful to have my own “follow you anywhere” fans, including those for whom our only connection is a signature, scrawled in red ink, on the title pages of my many books.

Thank you.