Obligations

What is your obligation to your readers? Do you think about them when you write? (I already know Natasha's answer!)

I've been thinking about this since my Magickeepers series came out. Every day I hear from kid readers. And some of them write me weekly. I write back to each and every one of them . . . sometimes, if I have a lot of emails, it takes me a couple of days, but I try to respect that they are excited to write to me, and to honor their "relationship" with the characters. I also feel I have an obligation to be a reasonably sane email correspondent. I don't tell them all my vast conspiracy theories, I don't talk politics, or my various problems. I try to be cheerful; I try to encourage them to read (my number-one mantra with them).

When I hear from adult readers, the emails boil down to three very clear varieties. The overwhelming majority (if I was going to hazard a guess, I'd put it at 95%) are very kind emails about how much my books mean to them, or how they made them FEEL. About 3 or 4% are crackpot emails. I have been proposed to (twice), asked to ship free copies of my books (usually to a foreign country), had love letters sent to me by a man in Portugual and two men in Italy . . . you name it . . . it's come to my email box in response to a book. About 1 to 2% are "scolding" letters. They're not even letters ASKING why I did x or y in a book; they are letters telling me what I did wrong. Often (but not always), they are emails criticizing the curse words I use. One time it was a criticism of subject matter.

Now . . . if you don't think that people consider an author to have OBLIGATIONS to them as reader, get thy butt over to Amazon and choose a book by an author who had a rabid following for a while and then "let down" their readers (Anne Rice comes to mind). Readers do not seem to be lukewarm. They take it personally (something I never do. Ever. I don't get that. If you don't like the curse words in my book . . . sorry . . . but I don't think I owe you an apology, and yes, my mother DOES know I have characters that curse like sailors--yes, this has been sent to me . . . do my PARENTS know?).

And what about obligations to a genre? What about books or movies with a "gotcha" at the end?

In my adult books, I geneally feel my obligation is to entertain, but hopefully make you think. Most of my readers know my adult books generally champion in some way, shape or form (but not always) gay rights. It's not a political message, but a personal one. I don't have gay characters because that was the "trend" in chick lit. I have them because they populate my world and I wanted to show gay characters as real people, as friends and lovers. My books always have messages of tolerance. I try for race to be an afterthought (T.D. Russell was African-American; Jackie Rooney in Knockout was mixed-race, as was Georgia Ray in Diary of a Blues Goddess; Maggie in Invisible Girl was half-Vietnamese). If you WANT to find the deeper themes of the world as I see it, you can. If not, just play along for the ride and have fun.

In my middle grade and YA, I feel my obligation is to say SOMETHING. To say something that honors what a difficult yet glorious journey it is to evolve from child to adult, to navigate those often-choppy waters.

Those are my obligations. And you?