And the incredibleness keeps on coming…

Even putting this on a strict “friends only” filter, I’m nervous about talking about it…but I just have to tell. I won’t mention names.

I sent a PDF of the galley of Mortal Touch out to two people who responded positively about doing blurbs. One of them is a very respected academic folklore expert who is a specialist in the New England “vampire” cases. I’ll call him Dr. A. I read his book as research when I started revising Mortal Touch. He e-mailed me that he’d gotten to chapter 4 and liked it…and then I never heard from him again, at least, I didn’t receive the e-mail. Something may have glitched. I seem to have missed one or two other rather important e-mails earlier this year.

With the upsetting events that started right after I sent out the galleys, I didn’t follow up the way I should have. Then, having not followed up, I was embarrassed to follow up late. (Yes, you may get those whips out and beat me. Hard.) Had I offended Dr. A? Did I play a little too fast and loose with my allusions to a certain well-known case? Did he think I based Hiram’s fictitious friend on him? (I did not, but you could see some resemblance.)

When the final book came out in July, I wrote Dr. A a very nice thank you letter for agreeing to look at the galley, apologized for not getting back to him sooner, and sent him an autographed copy of the finished book. I sent it to an office address I found for him online because that was all I had–I’d sent the galley electronically. I hadn’t heard anything since…until today.

Today, I got an e-mail from Dr. A.

He apologized for not acknowledging the finished book, but his association with the place where he had an office had ended, and they weren’t forwarding his mail, so he didn’t get the book until recently. He went on to say:

I have been giving talks about the vampire tradition in local libraries and have made a point of recommending Mortal Touch as a wonderful fictional treatment of the authentic vampire tradition in this region. I hope some libraries and patrons order copies. Wherever I talk, people seem to love vampire fiction, and your work has the honesty and local color that brings the characters and their towns to life and makes the plot palpably real. (And you can quote me on that!)

I also want to tell you that my sister read your manuscript and said that it was one of the best books of this genre that she’s ever read. She loved the characters and the upredictable turns of the plot. And that’s saying something, since she has–as long as I can remember (she’s two years older than me)–consumed (ooops, sorry again) fantasy/horror/mystery fiction at an astonishing rate. Since I don’t read nearly the volume of fiction as she, I respect her opinions on it.

I look forward to subsequent books in this series.

I am just…just…there aren’t words, even, for how I feel! Dr. A is up there with a tiny handful of academics I hold in the highest possible esteem (along with Jan Perkowski, Jacques Vallee, and Ronald Hutton–and of course, our own Dr. Elizabeth Miller). And he’s recommending my book!

The Blogcritics.org review popped up in both my Yahoo and Google news filters this morning. If this keeps up, I’m going to be reduced to gibbering uselessness!

I just wish all this would translate into more book sales! Ego-boosts are wonderful, but they won’t pay the bills. I guess I just have to keep on working on that–I’ll crack it somehow.