Yes, I used to watch Art Linkletter. It came on TV in Bisbee while I was home from school for lunch. I could watch his \u201ckids\u201d segment and still make it back to Greenway School on time as long as I ran part of the way.<\/p>\n
I started to name this blog \u201cFans Say the Darnedest Things,\u201d but I changed it to \u201cReaders\u201d to broaden the scope.<\/p>\n
Years ago, during the Q & A session at a book signing, a woman seated in the front row raised her hand. \u201cMy father was a doctor,\u201d she said. \u201cMy husband is a doctor, but that doesn\u2019t mean I can be a doctor. And just because Joanna\u2019s father was a sheriff and her husband was a sheriff doesn\u2019t mean she can be a sheriff.\u201d In actual fact, Joanna\u2019s husband, Andy, was a sheriff\u2019s deputy running for the office of sheriff when he was gunned down, but I didn\u2019t point that out to the lady in question. Pointing out that someone in the room is dead wrong isn\u2019t polite and my mother, Evie, would not approve. <\/p>\n
Instead I explained that yes, when Joanna was elected to office on what was generally regarded as a sympathy vote, most people had expected her to be sheriff in name only. I finished by asking my questioner if she had read book number three, Shoot\/Don\u2019t Shoot, in which Joanna sends herself through police academy training so she can become a professional law enforcement officer.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d she told me. \u201cI don\u2019t like those books.\u201d<\/p>\n
In that case, I wondered, why the blazes are you here? For the record, the word that passed through my head was not \u201cblazes,\u201d and I didn\u2019t ask that question aloud either. As far as I know, I\u2019ve never seen that \u2018reader\u201d again.<\/p>\n
And yesterday, I heard from another one. \u201cSecond watch was very good unfinished business I did not like I wanted mystery not family info, I dont care who lives or dies if it isnt part of the story very boring.\u201d<\/p>\n
Okie dokie then. I quoted the entire message because it really left me scratching my head, and not just because of the very long run-on sentence and all the missing pieces of punctuation. Obviously she objected to the part of the book that told the story of what happened to Ali\u2019s father, Bob Larson. My problem is, Bob Larson has always been part of the story. How he and Edie lived their lives is a major part of what makes Ali Reynolds who she is. And if you only care about whether or not the bad guys live and die, aren\u2019t you missing out on the best part of the story? If you don\u2019t want to be bothered with any of the background context then maybe sticking to newspaper accounts would be preferable in terms of reading material. <\/p>\n
I don\u2019t see my characters as super-heroes. They are ordinary people living ordinary lives. That includes those very important three Ls\u2014Living, Loving, and Losing. I want my readers to care about the good guys and understand the bad guys.<\/p>\n
As my mother would have expected, I sent yesterday\u2019s correspondent a polite response: “Sorry you were disappointed. My characters aren\u2019t superheroes. It turns out I am interested in who lives and who dies, so perhaps my books aren\u2019t for you.\u201d <\/p>\n
Were both these folks readers? Yes. Are they fans? No. I doubt I\u2019ll be hearing from her again, either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yes, I used to watch Art Linkletter. It came on TV in Bisbee while I was home from school for lunch. I could watch his \u201ckids\u201d segment and still make it back to Greenway School on time as long as I ran part of the way. I started to name this blog \u201cFans Say the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-Gg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2620"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2622,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2620\/revisions\/2622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}