Readers are Good People (and One of 'Em is a Contest Winner)

People who read give me hope for humanity.

That's not to say that I don't like people who don't read, mind you--if that were the case, I'd have approximately 89% fewer friends (sadly). But, one of the true joys of this self-publishing odyssey has been seeing how incredibly supportive and generous of spirit avid readers can be.

Nowhere has that been more evident than within the Goodreads community. As I've begun to shamelessly and undoubtedly annoyingly canvas the world for people willing to read The Camelot Shadow and share their thoughts about it, I've had the good fortune to become acquainted with complete and total strangers who are not only willing to spend several hours hanging out in a story I created--which, in and of itself, is amazingly cool, and incredibly humbling--but they are so filled with encouragement and positive energy, so supportive of a guy chasing a dream, that I literally traipse about with a bounce in my step whenever I hear from one of them (a podiatrist stopped me on the street and suggested I pay him a visit until I explained the reason for the unusual hitch in my giddy-up). And, this bounce is happening even though work is insane, we're in the midst of selling our condo and trying to buy a new place, our amazing but never-not-busy 20-month-old is racing about, sleep is in woefully short supply, and we're prepping for baby number two. That's how powerful even a few words of encouragement can be, and that's something that I think the tight-knit community of omnivorous and voracious readers understands.

Like all of those folks, I love stories. I need stories. They entertain me, they make me think, they make me laugh, they make me cry, and they help me find meaning and give me hope even on days when the world seems completely insane and impossibly screwed up. Being able to write a story that helps someone else feel that way, even if only a little, is the best way I can think of to try to repay the impossible debt I owe to every single writer of tales whose work I have ever read and felt joy in discovering--and to those whose work I have yet to read. 

Thank you, readers--not just readers of The Camelot Shadow, but all readers: the people who, every day, encourage yet another new voice to shine the bright light of their prose into the void.

(Oh, and as for that Amazon gift card contest thing...so selfless are my good friends and readers that while many wrote reviews, none "officially" entered the contest...so, I took the liberty of entering anyone who wrote a review during the contest period, which concluded yesterday. A random drawing yielded a lucky winner in Mr. Bret J. Bowman. I suspect he'll be using his winnings to procure some new reading material...)