Thursday, 22 September 2011
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If a tree falls in the forest...
As the author of the Cassie O'Malley Mysteries, I have lived in Cassie's fictional world for nearly a decade now. I've had breakfast with her at The Eggery, ordering my eggs and potatoes from Greta, the Eggery's popular waitress with Tourette's. I've spent the night with Cassie at the Bhait's Motel (we have a very close and entirely platonic relationship, me and Cassie) and met it's unfailingly polite, but eerily creepy proprietor, Mr. Beejit Bhait. I've ridden shotgun with Cassie in her classic Mustang, in the hour before the sun comes up, hunting for the Jersey Devil and I've sat with her at the Mall of New Jersey, nursing a flat soda and hunting for a story.
But what I've learned from my experience as an author is that the writer by himself (or herself) does not create the book. The book happens as a result of a partnership that develops between an author and his/her readers. You see, for a very long time, I carry that fictional world around inside my head. It is so real to me that I nearly forget, at that stage, that I am the only person who has visited that particular world. And then, through some inexplicable process, I download the mess from my head to my computer. Amazingly, my publisher sends me a check and she arranges for the world to be captured between the book's covers.
And then, the truly magical thing happens, the most amazing thing of all. Other people read the book and suddenly, they're carrying that world around inside their head too. It's only then that the book can truly be said to exist. When you find it not in the author's head, but in the reader's head. That is the partnership between a writer and a reader. That is the magic of books.
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Comments (7)
I know I'm weird, but bear with me...What you said here is so true and so beautiful, it actually brought tears to my eyes. It is magical, indeed!
You are an inspiration and an encouragement! Thank you!
I long for the day when the characters in my head might make it onto the pages of a book and then into another person's head.
HUGS!
Best wishes for your continued successes as an author.
Bear and I and all these other little and not so little characters in my head truly appreciate this. Jeff, I love your books and appreciate all that you do to bring them to life. Thank you.
Yeah, it's pretty cool.
This is exactly my experience. The last two books I have read were definitely blending with my actual life on more than one occasion. You can't do that with electronic media, to that extent.
I often become so intimate with the books I read I find myself talking in the genre of the book, anywhere from the Three Musketeers to J.R.R. Tolkein. When caught...it is almost embarrassing. "Why are you talking like that?" someone asks. My answer is, "I guess I picked it up when I was in the shire this weekend."
Okay, Jeff. You owe it to us to produce another Cassie O'Malley book. So do it, okay. And it's Cassie and me, not me and Cassie! Sheesh! Have I taught you nothing???