Happy Birthday to Us!
Our little sounis community is all grown up. 15 years old, can you believe it?? We're old enough to act surly and roll our eyes, tear up our army enrollment papers, and go searching for Hamaithes' Gift.
This community formed just before King of Attolia was published and has remained active pretty steadily over the years. With the publication of the last book in the series, this may be sort of a last hurrah for us, although I think we'll be talking about RotT for quite awhile yet.
As a tribute to sounis, I thought there'd be no better words than what Megan said in the virtual author visit last week. Here's a transcript from the part of her talk that touched on the dedication in RotT.
"They're probably wondering why I dedicated it to Sophos, right? The book is dedicated to Sounis, and that is the community on Livejournal that has been talking about my books for the last 14 years or something. They are a truly wonderful group of people and I've loved peeking into their community and reading their conversations over their shoulders. And sometimes participating; I was in their Halloween chat in disguise, just last week. But Sounis was one of the reasons I have the Not Telling policy.
Back in the day, authors didn't get a lot of interaction with their fans. When the Thief came out, there weren't Amazon reviews. The only reviews you got were in School Library Journal and Kirkus and Horn Book, and that was it. Maybe really dedicated people would write a letter and after 6 or 8 months your publisher would send it to you. The Internet was transforative. Suddenly you could see, in real time, people reacting to your book. And one of the things that happened in Sounis was they were talking about my books and everything that I'd ever hoped anybody would notice, they did. To get that kind of experience as an author, not only that they liked your book but that they GOT the book...and they picked up on things on a second read. Which told me, "Oh my gosh, they read my book twice." Or they read my book three times. And they talked about it and somebody understood something one way, and somebody else would present a different interpretation. It was great.
Watching it, I realized, I never wanted to be part of that conversation because the author in the conversation short circuits everything by just answering the question...If the author can just answer that question at the touch of a screen I think it takes something away from those readers who really want to figure all that stuff out for themselves. I have watched for years while people in that community essentially validate the things I've written, and I'm incredibly greatful. When it was time to dedicate this last book, I figured, these people--some of whom had been waiting for 23 years since reading The Thief--there's really nobody in the world that means more to me than these readers so I dedicated the book to them."
So, have a slice of Sophos' iced honey cake and raise a glass to us!
This community formed just before King of Attolia was published and has remained active pretty steadily over the years. With the publication of the last book in the series, this may be sort of a last hurrah for us, although I think we'll be talking about RotT for quite awhile yet.
As a tribute to sounis, I thought there'd be no better words than what Megan said in the virtual author visit last week. Here's a transcript from the part of her talk that touched on the dedication in RotT.
"They're probably wondering why I dedicated it to Sophos, right? The book is dedicated to Sounis, and that is the community on Livejournal that has been talking about my books for the last 14 years or something. They are a truly wonderful group of people and I've loved peeking into their community and reading their conversations over their shoulders. And sometimes participating; I was in their Halloween chat in disguise, just last week. But Sounis was one of the reasons I have the Not Telling policy.
Back in the day, authors didn't get a lot of interaction with their fans. When the Thief came out, there weren't Amazon reviews. The only reviews you got were in School Library Journal and Kirkus and Horn Book, and that was it. Maybe really dedicated people would write a letter and after 6 or 8 months your publisher would send it to you. The Internet was transforative. Suddenly you could see, in real time, people reacting to your book. And one of the things that happened in Sounis was they were talking about my books and everything that I'd ever hoped anybody would notice, they did. To get that kind of experience as an author, not only that they liked your book but that they GOT the book...and they picked up on things on a second read. Which told me, "Oh my gosh, they read my book twice." Or they read my book three times. And they talked about it and somebody understood something one way, and somebody else would present a different interpretation. It was great.
Watching it, I realized, I never wanted to be part of that conversation because the author in the conversation short circuits everything by just answering the question...If the author can just answer that question at the touch of a screen I think it takes something away from those readers who really want to figure all that stuff out for themselves. I have watched for years while people in that community essentially validate the things I've written, and I'm incredibly greatful. When it was time to dedicate this last book, I figured, these people--some of whom had been waiting for 23 years since reading The Thief--there's really nobody in the world that means more to me than these readers so I dedicated the book to them."
So, have a slice of Sophos' iced honey cake and raise a glass to us!