This Week’s World’s Best Reader

FIRST OFF, time’s running out to get your name in for the giveaway of signed copies of The Electric Church and The Digital Plague, #1 and#2 in the Avery Cates series, so email/comment before day’s end. I’ll announce the winners on Monday, 8/17.

SECOND: AWESOME FOLKS. I hate the term “fan”; to me it always sounds deprecating, as it’s a shortened form of “fanatic” and has a connotation of frenzy and weirdness. Plus also too, whenever I think “I have fans” I look down and discover that once again my pants are missing and just start laughing. So, I have readers. Readers who choose, inexplicably, to purchase my books (or steal them, or borrow them, both options being only slightly less cool than paying for ’em, you ask me).

And sometimes these readers send me a note – sometimes of thanks, sometimes with questions, occasionally with demands. And sometimes they send me pictures, like this:

Yup, that’s a hand made Monk T-shirt by This Week’s World’s Best Reader, Sarabeth, who writes: “First of all I would like to state that your books are magnificently awesome. Kudos to you for managing to create brilliant sci-fi in a sea of mediocrity. The main purpose of this e-mail is to share with you a certain crafty undertaking based on your work. I fell in love with the cover art of The Electric Church (in fact, it was what initially drew me to the book), and took it upon myself to display the image on my body as wearable art. After hours of careful stenciling and freehand fabric marker-ing, I was rewarded with an awesome t-shirt! Which is clearly shown in the attached image. Hero worship in the form of arts-and-crafts! Who knew? One day this art may reside on my skin… still undecided. But if it does, you will be the first to know.”

I think I’ll start posting when folks do awesome things like this, if they’ll give permission. For those who have done awesome things in the past which I did not think to post, I apologize, I am slow.

I also think I’m going to make a shirt with my face on it and the phrase MAGNIFICENTLY AWESOME underneath. As a matter of fact, I think everyone should create little web graphics like that and put them everywhere. Why not?

EDIT ONE HOUR LATER: The annoyingly talented Sean Ferrell (who’s debut novel, Numb, will be out from HarperCollins in 2010) sends me this: