Your #1 Fan

Ran over to the public library to pick up some of your awesome book suggestions only to find it's closed until October 12! I felt like Clark Griswald pulling up to the gates of Wally World. Wha??? Closed?? So I hopped on my bike and pedaled to the next suburb over where the library is perfectly decent, but significantly smaller. They didn't have anything I was looking for, and I was in a hurry, so I picked up something just because the author is from Chicago (feeling a little Chi-town sentimental after the Olympics debacle). The title? The Amateurs by a guy called Marcus Sakey. Crime thriller, not my usual genre, but oh, man, I COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN. Kept my eyes pried open until the wee hours just to get to the finish line. So exhilarating, no?

After finishing a good book, I usually bask in its glow for a while, thinking about the characters and the story and the art of putting it all together. Then, until this week, I'd return the book to the library or slide it back on my bookshelf, talk to a few friends about it, and that would be that.

But this time, armed with the @ sign and a Twitter account, I contacted Mr. Sakey just to let him know how un-put-downable his book was. I wrote a charming message in under 140 characters, hit enter and...felt like Annie Freaking Wilkes. I wrote a fan letter. I am truly a dork.

Or am I? Do people often do this? Do you? Social sites have definitely made our world smaller, ushering in an era of overfamiliarity. I felt well within my rights to contact Mr. Sakey directly, a far cry, I thought, from sending a letter to Ralph Macchio in care of Teen Beat magazine, complete with rainbow stickers on the envelope and purple ink. But, really, are they not essentially the same thing?

Then again, Ralph never wrote me back. I got a message from @MarcusSakey in less than 24 hours...hmmm...