Thoughts on corresponding with an author

I'm in quasi-correspondence with an author right now. His name is Jimmy Gownley, and he's the author and illustrator of the graphic novel series Amelia Rules! (which Sharon and I both love).

How did it start? Well...

I've been using Twitter since late April to post about my job at the library. When I first borrowed Amelia Rules! volume 1 ("The Whole World's Crazy) through an interlibrary loan, I posted a few messages about it, and how much I enjoyed it. Then a few weeks later, I did the same regarding volume 2 ("What Makes you Happy")

At some point along the way, I noticed that a kgownley was following me on Twitter, commented about it, and then started following her on Twitter. It turned out that she was Jimmy Gownley's wife.

When I received volume 3 ("Superheroes") and tweeted about it, she asked how I liked it. I replied "one word review: fantastic."

A few weeks later, I was reading kgownley's posts, and noticed that she followed jimmygownley. I put two and two together (and got four), and started following him as well. Yesterday he posted a link to the cover of the newest volume of Amelia Rules! (volume 5 "The Tweenage guide to not being Unpopular" -- Amazon has it listed for sale in April). I retweeted it, and then posted a comment that said "I showed the cover of AR 5 to Sharon and we both loved it. It's going to be a long seven month wait for it. :-( "

So when I came in to work this morning and logged in to Twitter (to complain about doing overdues), there was a message to me from Jimmy Gownley. He said "@jake_fehr I'm glad you both like the cover. I'm really happy with how the book turned out - I'm excited to get feedback on it!"

I've got to say that I was really impressed. He could've easily ignored my tweet (though he is following me on Twitter, I didn't specifically direct the tweet at him), but instead he took a brief moment to acknowledge me. As far as I'm concerned, Jimmy Gownley is a class act, and I'll continue to be a fan of him and his works for a long time to come.

That being said, if I'm disappointed by Amelia Rules! volume 4 when it arrives via ILL later this week, he'll be hearing about it.