Play It Again, Jim
Why Do I Send Newsletters?
Sometimes it’s a good idea to step back from our routines and ask why we do certain things over and over. Like this newsletter every month. Well, almost every month.
So why do I send them?
Sure, it’s to promote my books, and I’m grateful to every single person on my mailing list for being a reader, or at least a potential reader, and allowing me to appear in your inbox to share my books with you. Thank you, sincerely.
But that isn’t the most important reason, at least not anymore.
Certainly, I send the newsletter to gain insights from the responses I receive, what readers like or dislike about my stories, their perceptions of some of the characters, and pleas not to kill someone off (e.g. Sindy Steele).
But perhaps more important are these reasons:
Connection to old friends. Many of you will recognize yourself here if you’ve responded to my newsletters. It’s funny how certain topics have brought messages from friends I haven’t heard from in decade. It gives me a clue as to what they’re like now, and it’s interesting to see what struck a chord in them to cause them to respond.
Continuing dialogue with friends and readers that I see or hear from regularly. Some of my friends respond almost each month which is nice way to just stay in touch. I’m not a big phone person so this is often ideal for me.
Finding new friends. I genuinely love to hear from readers I’ve never met.
Finally, writing the newsletter makes me think about things I often don’t take the time to reflect upon. Some are serious issues like life and death, or what may come after, or the dangers and ramifications of a nuclear war; others aren’t so serious, like my least favorite books, or maybe the things that annoy me the most (like people who take forever to order in a restaurant, or who make it so damned complicated … don’t get me started again).
Occasionally I check to see who has unsubscribed. It’s almost always a name I don’t recognize. And then, every once in a while, it’s someone I know. Of course, I then wonder … Was it something I said? But I have to let it go.
I do answer every response, including even a few scams that the newsletter seems to attract. They run my book through an AI app and then they use the AI summary and insights on my books to tell me how much they love my stories, which of course they have never read, and would I like to be featured on—you name it, Good Morning America, or an interview on 60 Minutes, or NPR—for a nominal fee, which they call an “investment.”
It’s kind of ironic to be scammed by people (or computers) using AI, the very centerpiece of my novels.
But I digress.
Why do I send these newsletters? Because they’re fun. I make them as good as I can, but I don’t worry about them like I do the novels, spending hours trying to decide on a single piece of punctuation. They’re more personal and less formal, like having a chat over coffee and croissants, a way for us to stay connected.
I hope you enjoy reading them, because I enjoy writing them. I think I may have even enjoyed writing this one.
EJS
P.S. Do you have a question or suggestion for me for future newsletters? I’d love to hear from you, as always. ejsimon@ejsimon.com
Maybe . . . science fiction? That often involves space travel, feats of engineering and things like artificial intelligence, which recently left the realm of science fiction and is becoming the story of our lives whether we like or not, and opening doors to futures we can’t even imagine. Writing about AI has made me very cautious with it in real life, so no, not science fiction.
After much late-night thinking, I’ve concluded that our lives aren’t lived inside novels. Not just for the reasons already mentioned, but also because we don’t know what comes after. It could be nothing, or nothing much, just a quiet conversion from one state to another, or … it could be huge, dwarfing even the longest Stephen-King-novel of a life here on earth so far. It still seems amazing to me that no one has figured that one out definitively in the entire course of human history. (Although we may find out in my novel to be released later this year, titled, Where Did They Go? Stay tuned for details.)
For now though, I believe that—unlike in novels—our lives seldom have neat plots with equally neat endings. They have loose ends that probably won’t be tied up, chapters we can’t rewrite, dialogue that isn’t always clever—and a climax that may already be behind us—or just moments away in our future.
And, one last thought on this: If we view our lives as a novel—I wonder who the author is?
EJS
P.S. If your life were a novel, what genre would it be? Would there be a villain? I’d love to hear from you! ejsimon@ejsimon.com