Yesterday, I mentioned about reconnecting with old friends that I hadn’t been in contact with for years. All because of my upcoming release, In This Life.

I think this is the most wonderful, but strange, thing about writing. It’s a solitary experience for the writer, which is something the reader will probably never realize or understand. Not that they should. But a writer sits at their desk, or wherever they do their writing, churning out words and paragraphs and stories and worlds, spending most of their time in their own heads.

I don’t know about the rest of you writers out there, but no matter where I am or who I’m with, my head is usually wrapped around my characters or stories. I can be involved in the most heated conversation and all it takes is one word or one look or one smell, and my brain instantly warps into another time and place where I see other characters and other lives and things just run. It becomes like a movie in my head and one I can’t control. And the next thing I know, the person I’m talking with is looking at me like I’ve lost my mind, because I probably have, and is waiting for me to respond to something they’ve just said. Only I can’t, because I wasn’t listening to them. I was doing what I do best – making up stories. Getting pulled away into a fictional world that I, for once, have complete control of.

Okay. So I got sidetracked, but there is a point to all of this. Even though writing is a lonely experience, it’s really exciting to reunite with folks you haven’t heard from in years – all because of a mutual love of reading. This happened to me, a lot, over the past couple of weeks. In This Life went up for pre-sale, word got out, and now I’m getting emails from friends that I haven’t forgotten but that I’d lost touch with. Even as far back as a dozen years ago! It’s been an exciting and inspiring occurrence, too, like maybe stars are aligning or life is, in some way, coming full circle. Whatever it is, it feels nice.

See? Reading really is good for you. Not just for your brain and your imagination, but for your social well-being. It brings together people who understand just how valuable the written word is. That, to me, is a very good thing.