Dear readers,

I love you! I've already met many of you and I'm so thrilled and just tickled by this experience. I'm awed and delighted, too, but most of all I'm truly humbled by the kindness of all of you who spent precious time to write to me. You can't imagine how grateful I feel and how I so dearly appreciate what all of you have written. I hope I haven't written anything too heavy to weigh down your inboxes. If I weren't such a gabbler, me, then I wouldn't be a writer, you know? So I also thank those who responded to my response! You're angels, truly. And so from my heart: thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!

But here's the thing. I never, ever expected to get so many loving emails. I didn't know, either, how much time it would take out of my writing-time to answer these beautiful emails. And every day instead of making progress, I just get farther and farther behind. So please understand: if you don't get an email back immediately, it doesn't mean anything except that it came after I had collapsed and realized that, for many reasons, I needed a secretary. I've needed one for some time, for things that have nothing to do with emails or letter writing--but the emails made me see that I had to get one ASAP with an emphasis on the "S." Life is much easier now.

Also, please don't think that because I haven't answered your email, I haven't read it. I do read all my emails and letters--that's why I feel as if I know you--and I love, love, love reading them. So...please, please understand, if you don't get a reply from me at once, it isn't that I've forgotten you, or that you're less important than someone else, or that that you'll never get an answer. You will. But I have to figure out how to balance the emails with the other things in my life.

Thank you, again and again!

Lisa January 2008: (this letter has been edited)

The reason I’m writing today is that yesterday was a blur of emails of congratulations and of my own mouse-like bewilderment. It seems that because of the activity on the Web—and when I think of the Web, I think of you—Harper put out the second volume of the Vampire Diaries out on December 26th. Not a very auspicious time; I think—I know that I always buy books before Christmas. Despite that, because of my faithful fans, it will be debuting on the New York Times Bestseller List for Children’s Books.

It’s sent everyone into a tizzy, so I guess it must be important. In any case, it means that my website is going up NOW instead of this summer. It will start with only two stories on it, but one of those stories, Thicker Than Water, is where you’ll find the answer to what that flower pendant I sent really means.

Now comes the begging favors part—I hate this! But would you, could you, put something up on your site saying that my site will be opening (supposedly this Friday) or has opened (after it’s up). It would mean so much to me, because the stories I’m putting up are all for old, loyal fans who will already know the characters, and appreciate them. I would like my loyal readers to know that there is be an 80-manuscript-page Vampire Diaries story on the site, a shorter Night World story, and much more to come.

That was the other thing I was going to ask you. Give me a character, or book, and I’ll write a short story just for you about them. I want to please my stalwart readers; it’s desperately important to me that I give them something back, for all they’ve given me.

By the way, the deal for Vampire Diaries V: Damon is on again.

June 2007:

One thing that happened is that in trying to cope with my feelings of loss and depression I’ve started writing again. I had to do something to take my mind off the terrible emptiness I felt, and my subconscious was kind to me and let loose at least part of the block that has kept me from writing.

So I’ve rewritten about half of Strange Fate to my satisfaction, and now I just have to type it. It helped break my writers’ block to handwrite it all out in college-lined notebooks and now I have to translate my strange hieroglyphics back into words. I’m on Chapter Five in typing it.

The odd news is that, writing Strange Fate in notebooks that way, I had no idea how long it would come out on the printed page—and I miscalculated. The book is about twice the size of any of the other Night World books, although I’m trying to cut it. I think that this is okay with my publisher (it’s a little complicated, but key people have been out just at the wrong times) and that it will come out as a single book, just a very long one. It’s possible that it may be two volumes, but I don’t think so.

Sincerely,

Lisa Letter from 2006:

Dear Lesley,

It’s just an explanation of how I became aware of the story of Cassandra, “Cassie,” the shy, introverted social outcast descendent of witches who’s cursed with The Power—I mean power—and is the only one who can change fate. I was walking out of Nordstrom’s, feeling incredibly guilty because I’d bought two handbags—retail therapy, you know. So there I was, shopping bag in hand, when I saw a giant poster thing with a girl who looked a lot like Diana (or maybe Thea from Spellbinder) and a girl who looked a lot like Faye (or maybe Blaise) and a spooky sort of castle behind them. I’m used to seeing things like this, and I walked by the poster when I saw the words: Descended from witches; cursed with power, only she can change fate . . .

And it bothered me a little. I thought about Secret Circle, and how those words would have been good words to describe Cassie. But the girl on the poster was blond, and I’m used to seeing—and hearing—things on TV and in the movies that remind me of my books. It wasn’t until that evening when I sort of absentmindedly asked Julie to look Hex up and see what it was about. Suddenly Julie appeared in the doorway, and she was mad. “You have to come and look at this,” she said grimly. “Hex is about Cassandra, Cassie, a shy, lonely, social outcast, who has only the love of her roommate to sustain her . . .”

And there were other things, of course. Enough that the next day, my agent almost fell off her chair, and the lawyers were excited. I wasn’t excited. I think I did a lot of crying, and then I got mad too. And somehow, being angry connected some circuit inside me so that I could write again. This time, the anger made me decide that if “edgy” shows like Hex were what people wanted, then by God, I would rewrite Vampire Diaries, returning it to its original form, the book I changed to make the trilogy, which was edgy enough to give people paper cuts. In about half an hour I whipped out a proposal for doing the books as I’d originally intended, as adult, stand-alone, singletons—and, boy, did Ginger and the other Ginger and Elizabeth (my agents) like it. But it also made them a little nervous. The problem (as always) is that Vampire Diaries was written while I was under contract to Daniel Weiss Inc., which is now Alloy, and therefore, even after all these years, only half legally mine.

I don’t care. That’s one thing I decided when I made the pact with the Almighty. I decided that if Alloy doesn’t want me to write the books the way I want to write them, the way I’d planned to do them before they called and asked me to do a YA trilogy, then I’ll let them go ahead and republish the old books as YA. They’re planning to do that anyway, mostly because of you, bless you, and other readers like you, who have made it clear that there is still a market for my stuff, that my early writing is not forgotten. And then, I told God, I’ll write the books the way I like. My only interest in writing, at this point, is to express myself and to do something for the fans who’ve been so patient while I’ve treated them so badly.

Anyway, perhaps the question that I should be asking of you, and of my other faithful readers, is: do you want to see a new version of Vampire Diaries? One that’s closer to my original vision, and with all the bits that had to be cut out of the YA version put back in? Or would you rather simply see the original trilogy back on the American market? I know what I would prefer, but in the end it’s all really for you, so perhaps you can ask that question on your website and see what other people think. And you can give me your own opinion, which I respect more than I do any editor’s or agent’s. I’d like to know what you really think.

With all best wishes,

Lisa