I'd always heard of celebrities getting gifts from fans, but I never thought it would happen to me.
Okay, for one, I'm not a celebrity. For two, what a surprise and delight it was to come in from grocery shopping last week and find there was something waiting for me on the counter.
Carol in Utah (who has read all my books) had sent me a gift: a watercolor print of a cat that looks suspiciously like my Little Prince, Fred--the only difference: Fred has white whiskers. It's adorable and I can't wait to frame it.
Carol had seen pictures of Fred on my web site and MySpace pages. Who knew readers paid so much attention to those things. I mean, I know they like to see pictures of authors pets -- that's why I put them up there, and I've actually received comments from my readers about my cats, and they've told me about theirs.
Cool, huh?
What is it about grocery day? Yesterday I came home from the store and Frank was bouncing up and down like a yo-yo (hard to do when you've got a bum knee). "Come see, come see!" he called before I'd even gotten one bag of groceries in the door. There on the counter top was a HUGE box with the word FLOWERS in big type.
Who in the heck would be sending me flowers? If Mr. L bought me flowers, he'd have gotten them from Aldi -- not paid for Fed-X. My brother gave me a single peachy rose on Valentine's day. To hell with the groceries, I immediately opened the box, and inside were 18 perfect pinky/yellow roses.
Again: who in the heck would be sending me roses?
They were from my agent, in honor of making it to the New York Times Bestsellers list. To say I was flabbergasted is putting it mildly. Flabbergasted and utterly delighted. I can count on one hand the number of times I've received roses -- and the color was perfect. It's like she read my mind.
I could get used to this.
