Day 23 Author Blog Challenge

If you could meet one of your main characters or ideal reader anywhere in the world for coffee, drinks, dinner, or a caramel (tipping my hat to Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting), who would it be, where would you meet them, and why?

This is the first day of the challenge when I’m responding off-topic to some degree. I’m not short of imagination, not usually, but I can’t quite get my head around what or whom to choose, a character or a reader. And if a reader, then who this might be?

It could be I’m a bit weary. Challenges can be like that, when trying to write to the prompt in a timely fashion. Sometimes I find it works to break the task into sections.

A character or an ideal reader?

Or perhaps just a reader, or a reader who likes to write reviews?

The kind of reader who reads the Kindle preview of your book and based on that small sampling writes a scathing review of the whole of the work and posts this on Goodreads and other sites because they can’t post on Amazon when they haven’t actually purchased the item. The kind of reader who has yet to write a book or short story or perhaps write anything at all beyond attacking those who have put the long hours, days, weeks, months and years to learn the craft and write their way up the ladder to publication.

Yes, this is the reader I’d like to meet, but not for drinks or dinner or even a coffee, for these are things I do with those who understand what it is I do and the effort involved, and this includes people who give honest, but sometimes less than complimentary reviews.

I’d like to meet this person and introduce myself and gift them with a signed copy of the book they’ve never read yet denigrated so publicly and give them a bag of sweets to eat during the reading, to sweeten the experience and to counteract some of the burden of bitterness they obviously carry.