Fandom: Being A Fan and Having Fans (Spoiler Alert - Includes Sweet Puppy Video)

A fan admires an author’s writing. A fan follows an author’s career, and will buy that author’s books based on the author’s name alone. I’m a big fan of author Louise Penny, who writes mysteries that take place in a small village in Quebec. I love to read her books. I also love to read her blog as she describes how she writes, how she creates characters and brings them to life. She cares so much about her characters and it shows.

To witness the fascinating process of bringing a book to life is a gift. But it’s a gift that we, as fans, shouldn’t abuse. Knowing a few tidbits about an author’s life, or likes or loves, does not make you a friend or family member. You may know many things about an author’s style of writing, but you do not know the author personally. There are boundaries. I do feel that this is an important thing to remember. Even though I lived and worked in a very small town in Quebec for several years, Louise and I aren’t going to a curling tournament together anytime soon.

For many of us on this blog, our fans may be children and young adults. I happen to believe these are among the best fans you can have. They are truthful to a fault and loyal to the end. I have read several letters that Donna Cooner's fans sent to her after reading her incredible book, SKINNY. They melted my heart.

So, do I, as an aspiring writer, have fans? You bet I do! I have wonderful friends and family members who have believed in my dreams as long as I’ve dreamt them.. At the top of the list are my parents who encouraged me every day through their love and sometimes tough love. My brother, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, great aunts and great uncles, neighbors, writing friends and non-writing friends. I’m grateful to them all.

But I’d like to mention someone who has some fans in the best sense of the word.. He doesn’t know most of them. He can’t read their words of encouragement or see the lovely donations that have poured in to help him. He’s a five-month-old pit bull named Champ, brought to the shelter where I work by animal control who found him with severe facial injuries, abandoned in an apartment.

Sometimes we cannot perform certain veterinary procedures at our shelter clinic. When that occurs, we have to send an animal to a specialist. We have created a fund to handle these expenses, called the Mend A Friend Fund. So when we learned what surgeries Champ would need to help him heal, we reached out. We received thousands of individual donations and well-wishes from all 50 states except two. People wrote to us from England, Australia, Canada, Japan and France, to offer donations and heart-felt wishes for his recovery. If you want to talk about wonderful fans, Champ has them. They've never met him, and he has never written a book, but he is a rock star to many.

I love each and every one of his fans. And, I hope you have fans as golden as his.

PS: Here's a photo of our sweet guy and a little video of him playing in the clinic with some friends. He's doing extremely well and will go into a foster home very soon. Champ