I received an email from Charity asking me if I would consider officiating her upcoming marriage. In addition to my many careers, I am an ordained minister and occasionally marry couples. Charity lives in Minnesota and has offered to fly me and my family in for the weekend so I could be a part of this important day in her life.
I was honored by her request. I was also a little surprised. I’ve never met Charity in person. I’ve never spoken to her other than through email and social media. The only reason Charity and I know each other at all is because she read and enjoyed my novels and began reading my blog. Thanks so the wonders of the Internet, a friendship blossomed, and three years later, she made this unique request.
When I published my first novel, Something Missing, in the fall of 2009, I had very few expectations of my newfound role as a published author. I knew that I wouldn’t be quitting my day job anytime soon. I knew that one book did not guarantee a career in publishing. I knew that if I wanted my novel to be a success, I would have to do much of the promotion myself.
I was the antithesis of the starry-eyed author. I viewed my first novel as a tiny, unlikely, uncertain step into the publishing world.
As a result, my career as a novelist has rarely been disappointing. There have even been moments of actual excitement and joy.
Low expectations have a way of doing this for a person.
There have been surprises as well, and nothing has been more surprising than the number of readers who reach out to me on a daily basis via email or social media to let me know what they think of my work, and how some of these readers, like Charity, have become actual friends.
Last weekend Bill and Cheryl traveled from their home in New Jersey to visit me and my family. We spent the day hanging around my home, visiting a local bookstore, and eating ice cream for lunch and burgers for dinner. We chatted about books. We shared stories from our lives. Cheryl helped my wife finish knitting a sweater. Bill played catch with my daughter on our front lawn.
I met Bill and Cherylann in Vermont two years ago. We were attended a weekend book retreat together, and Bill was a fan of my work. He introduced himself to me as someone who loved my books, and two years later, I am honored to call Bill and Cherylann my friends.
Bill still thinks of himself as a bit of a stalker, and there may be some truth to this, but he’s a friend nonetheless. Bill and Cherylann recently began joining me for some of my storytelling performances in New York City, and this fall, they will return to Connecticut so Bill can try his own hand at storytelling at one of the local storytelling events that my wife and I host.
One day Bill picked up my second novel, Unexpectedly, Milo, and liked it very much. That book led him to me and to a friendship that means a great deal to us today.
Gabriela read Something Missing last year. After finishing the book, she went to my blog to learn more about me. She stumbled across a post about my brother, Jeremy, who had been missing for the last five years and presumed dead, and realized that the Jeremy who she had been working with six months ago in New Jersey was the same Jeremy who I described in my blog post. After some deliberation, she decided to bring us back together.
Two months later and just minutes before I was to take the stage at the 92nd Street Y in Tribeca to tell a story about my high school science teacher, Jeremy tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Don’t I know you?”
I couldn’t believe it. My dead brother had come back to life.
Gaby knew that I was scheduled to tell a story that evening and had strong-armed my brother into attending the show. After years of separation, she had managed to bring us back together when so many others could not. Jeremy invited my family to dinner a month later, where he met his two year-old niece for the first time. Joining us for dinner that night was Gaby, who I now consider my friend and savior.
Gaby and I remain in touch today through social media, and she continues to threaten to come to another one of my storytelling performances in New York soon.
Jeremy and I text each other almost every day now. We communicate more now than ever before. In September, he will be taking my wife and children to a family picnic that I cannot attend, and in October, we are going to attend our first Patriots game together.
I have a brother again. My children have an uncle. All of this is thanks to a reader who enjoyed my book and decided to reach out to me.
Since publishing Something Missing, I have published two more novels. The fourth will publish in the fall of 2014. Despite my initial pessimism about publishing career, it continues to surprise me. Thanks to my writing career, my wife has been able to stay home with our children for most of the last four years. My latest novel, Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend, has been translated into more than 20 languages worldwide, and I hear from international readers almost daily. I’ve met and befriended authors, readers and people in the publishing world who I never would’ve met had I not committed by butt to the chair. Though every book still feels like it could be my last, it feels less so today than it did in the fall of 2009.
These have been many unexpected blessings in my writing career. Blessings I could’ve never imagined. But it’s the friendships that I have formed thanks to stuff I make up in my head, with people who started out as fans of my work but have become so much more, that mean the most to me.