{"id":2281,"date":"2016-08-03T14:10:31","date_gmt":"2016-08-03T14:10:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/?p=2281"},"modified":"2020-01-18T09:35:17","modified_gmt":"2020-01-18T14:35:17","slug":"the-joy-of-meeting-your-readers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/the-joy-of-meeting-your-readers\/","title":{"rendered":"When an Author Meets Fans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Though I’d been publishing stories all through the 1980s, it wasn’t until I was in my first anthology in 1988 that I started getting reviewed and meeting fans on a wider basis.<\/p>\n

I was at an awards banquet in D.C. and the first person I ran into as I walked to the the banquet hall was one of my favorite authors, novelist Edmund White.\u00a0 I told him how much I enjoyed his work and when he asked my name, he said, “Oh, I loved your story” and went on to talk about it in laudatory terms.\u00a0 He dilated about career and getting started, warned me against dissing my peers in public, and when I said I was headed for Paris told me to look him up there.<\/p>\n

\"edmund<\/a>I was just starting out, and soon I would be publishing books on a regular basis, getting reviews, doing radio, print and TV interviews and living the author’s vida loca.<\/em>\u00a0 I met fans all the time, often in large numbers.\u00a0 It was always deeply humbling.<\/p>\n

The coolest moments, though, would be the unexpected ones. no matter who the reader was.\u00a0 Sometimes someone at an airport while I was on a book tour would come over to say they recognized me from a newspaper or magazine interview and tell me how much they liked a book or\u00a0 a particular story.\u00a0 Or I’d be having dinner or lunch by myself and a server would say, “Aren’t you–?” and thank me for whatever book meant something to them.<\/p>\n

It’s continued to happen closer to home, too.\u00a0 The other day I was checking out at a grocery store and a woman walked by said “You probably don’t remember me–”\u00a0 But I did because she’d gone to a recent writing conference I keynoted.\u00a0 She’d bought a copy of my first book of stories, which came out in 1990.\u00a0 “I didn’t know if I would connect to them or not, but I did.\u00a0 To all of them!”\u00a0 She said she could never imagine readers connecting to her<\/em> work like that.<\/p>\n

I laughed:\u00a0 “Every writer worries about it.\u00a0 You just have to keep writing and find the heart of your work.”<\/p>\n

I was tired that morning, but I left the store feeling great.\u00a0 Yes, I’ve gotten standing ovations from crowds of 500, and awards, and sold my literary papers to a university library, and gone on book tours in Europe, and been reviewed in the New York Times <\/em>more than once–but this brief conversation reminded me why I started to write so many years ago.\u00a0 To touch readers, one by one by one.<\/p>\n

Lev Raphael is the author of 25 books in genres from memoir to mystery and you can find them at Amazon.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Though I’d been publishing stories all through the 1980s, it wasn’t until I was in my first anthology in 1988 that I started getting reviewed and meeting fans on a wider basis. I was at an awards banquet in D.C. and the first person I ran into as I walked to the the banquet hall … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[746,749,292,748,198,747,496,214,383,495,750],"class_list":["post-2281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","tag-author-fans","tag-author-tours","tag-book-tours","tag-edmund-white","tag-fans","tag-meeting-your-fans","tag-publishing","tag-the-writing-life","tag-touring-as-an-author","tag-writing","tag-writing-novels"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2281"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5502,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2281\/revisions\/5502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}