You probably hear this a lot, but I am a huge fan. I absolutely love your books, but then again, I love all books in general. There is something so special about your stories though that keeps me coming back to them over and over again. They are comfort, wisdom, and a promise that sometimes seeing the world a little differently is not always a bad thing. You give me hope that as long as there is a great story floating around inside my head, someone will be there to read it. You have written about subjects that in my wildest daydreams I never could have imagined would ever happen. You’ve made me laugh out loud, cry, scream, and get so frustrated with characters that I just wanted to throttle them. And yet, I keep coming back for more. How exactly do you do it? How do you manage to entertain me and educate me all at once? You truly are a unique breed of writer. You, my dear, are why the universe deemed written word an absolute necessity. Without your novels I would not know that it was possible to produce “designer babies”, I wouldn’t know that sometimes it takes a few broken bones to finally see the truth, and I would not know that it is possible for silence to have a sound.

Your stories have taken me to a whole new world again and again. You made me take notice of cultures and ideas that I had never given a thought to before. The idea that even though you have passed away you still have the ability to miss what you left behind and that sometimes all it takes for a fairy tale to become reality is a little bit of faith. Thank you for all of the amazing characters who are so real you feel as though you’ve known them forever. You can’t help but root for them to succeed because you become so attached to them. The way you write your characters makes it impossible to not expect to run into them on the street while you’re out taking a walk. Their emotions are real. They experience fear, anger, resentment, hurt, and distrust as if they are living, breathing human beings. They are very much alive and you have breathed that life into them. They make your stories so relatable because we can identify with them on every possible human level.

Thank you for your honest, sensitive, and knowledgeable discussion of controversial topics such as Nazism, racial tensions, the death penalty, and suicide. You made these subjects a little less taboo and brought them to the very forefront of the human conscious. You make people think and think they do; about issues no one wants to acknowledge still exist in our modern world. You made a name for yourself by intertwining fiction with real world social issues and it is unbelievable. I cannot wait to see which subject you tackle next. Very few authors in this world would even touch the notion that ghosts do exist and that they exist in many forms, including our memories of the past which we refuse to let go of. I am truly in awe of you and your skills.

Thank you for your willingness to interact with your fans; for letting us see into your little corner of the world. It’s true that most celebrities are on social media these days, but who among us isn’t, really? That’s not the point. The point is that you acknowledge the fans who follow you on things like Twitter and Instagram. Being approachable and not untouchable makes us feel as though you genuinely enjoy knowing we’re out there. And out here we are; anxiously awaiting your next novel. So, once again, thank you for everything, from the very bottom of my heart. You really are one of a kind.