An interesting day

Yesterday was a rather interesting day. I don’t mean that the snow had melted after New Year’s Eve, which it had and which I loved. Some not so nice things had happened lately too – but fortunately not to me or my family or anywhere near here.

A relatively famous popular historian (real, academic historian, but with a big popular following) had written an editorial piece for one of our biggest (conservative) newspapers about how immigration can be an asset, not a drain on our resources. Immediately after the piece had been published, he’d been hit really hard by internet hatred. I happen to know that he has been bullied in the past, and this must have been rather traumatic for him, but he decided to post about it on his History Blog in the same newspaper, and that’s where I read about it. He claims not to be scared and will continue to stand up for what he believes in.

Since I have enjoyed numerous fantastic books by him, a tv show about history, a ‘live’ lecture by him as well as many fascinating blog posts, I decided to email him to show my support. Very soon afterwards I received an email in reply where he said that emails like mine make him realize the world is a lot better than it’s seemed lately, in his inbox. It was very nice of him to reply although I know he tends to do that, since I’ve emailed him twice before and asked for blog posts about different interesting historic topics and he’s always posted about those topics almost right away.

All this was nice enough, but also on the same day, I read a blog post by an author whose first two (fantasy) books I’ve read and enjoyed, where she talked about her writing and book related plans for the year and asked her readers for our plans. I decided to dare to reply and before the end of the evening I got a very nice reply where she thanked me for my well-wishes and in return wished me luck with my writing. I’d never imagined this woman who is sort of famous in Swedish writing circles would be so nice.

It’s not the first time though, that authors I admire have been nice and replied to my comments on their blogs.

A writer of historic romance even found my blog and commented (another blog than the one I’d posted my review on) and added it to her links list.

A science fiction writer and I even had a long conversation about his books in the comment fields on his page on Goodreads.

Another sf writer didn’t reply for nearly a year so I assumed he didn’t check that blog or had decided not to reply to any comments, but then suddenly I received a very polite reply.

A fantasy writer  of two books I really loved, also replied politely and told me he had an idea for a sequel but that other projects had come up instead.

I guess that’s it, but it’s unusual for me to have such nice things happening to me. Maybe it’s a good omen for the new year.