Practice Kindness

Readers, I urge you, if you enjoy an author who is not a big seller, send him or her an appreciative email.  It's the only reward most authors receive these days.  We certainly aren't in it for the money.

Here's an email that arrived this morning from a stranger who is located in Tampa, two thousand eight hundred ninety-six point one miles from my home in La Honda.  I've never met her, but her words gave me a glow that will last all week:

Thank you.  For writing and doing the fabulous podcasts of your work your books quite simply make me smile.  I love the characters who seem so real and down-to-earth, not just two dimensional or the usual caricatures, but complex, flawed and for the most part, so well intentioned. Kind of like your readers I imagine. Certainly this one. I sit down with an episode or two with a cup of coffee and the kind of sweet anticipation that these days passes for quiet excitement - from one old hippie to another, we really did/do have a lot of things right.
Bravo, please don't stop sharing your work.

I got mine.  Now try this.  Nurture some other obscure author (and these days, most of us are obscure).  With a few keystrokes you, dear reader, have the power to warm some writer's world.