I Get Letters

A fun perk of my work is that sometimes I hear from kids who read my books. I get the occasional email. I once got a phone call from a resourceful and unsupervised fan ("Is this L. L. Owens, the famous author?") And, of course, some people in this world still send snail mail. I love that!

The publisher of my 1999 book Bigfoot: The Legend Lives On forwarded two letters from third-graders that had selected the book as their favorite. So sweet! These kids are obviously Web savvy, too, as they had specific questions about my other books, personal life, and dog. I will write back to them this next week.

I'll have to actually dig out the book to answer a couple of the questions about my research/what I was thinking. I wrote the thing 10 years ago. Wow, that is hard to believe. I'm on my third computer and fourth residence since then. I can still picture the exact office setup I had when I started the book. I vividly remember my interviews with a couple of Bigfoot experts and my now-retired process of outlining and starting the writing using a fine-point black Uniball pen and yellow legal pads. I loved every minute of writing this book. It is gratifying enough to know that kids are still reading it — but knowing that an 8-year-old or two found the story exciting enough to comment on, and possibly remember for a while, is just the best.