Authors Are People Too

Wow.

Some of you may recall the offhand mention I made a while back of Mil Millington’s hilarious new book, Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About. I even felt his similarly-named website worthy of inclusion in my rather eclectic listing of Weblogs (it’s not truly a “weblog,” which led to my changing the heading to “Weblog (and Related) Links”). I have several friends who write, but I still have this impression that real (i.e., mainstream published) authors are somehow, well, abstract, part of another world. There’s certainly no connection between them and us lowly readers. I posted a little note on Mil’s website guestbook and thought nothing more of it. Maybe some fellow fan would read it, maybe not.

Today I got a personal e-mail from Mil himself, answering an offhand comment I’d made in my signing. Keep in mind that I wrote a mere two sentences, and fragments at that. His response was five paragraphs long.

It’s really nice to realize that not only is there a real person out there, but that, thanks to the Internet, communication is no longer limited to a single direction.

Thanks for the note, Mil. Now everybody go out and buy his book.