THE VALUE OF MY READERS

   A writer’s income fluctuates like a roller coaster. After nearly forty years of writing, I’ve had some great years, and some not so great. I really don’t care. Honestly. For some reason, that fact hit me today really hard when I realized how grateful I am for my readers. Maybe these melancholy feelings are due to my age. Or maybe it’s because I’m sitting here alone in my little bedroom office wondering if anyone cares that I write at all. Covid has put a damper on conferences and book signings and other ways of meeting my public, so writers feel kind of isolated and alone. Working on my story alone at the computer feels like giving a speech to empty chairs.

        Those feelings changed when my new social media guru posted something simple on my Facebook Street Team page. “Let us know where you are from.” I scrolled down through the answers, and, oh, my gosh, I’ve only heard from a fraction of my readers, but it really touched my heart to see all the places they are from, which in turn is all the places I have reached with my books. The United Kingdom, Africa, Australia, Poland, and just about every state in my beloved United States. In the past I have also heard from Germany, Taiwan, Russia, France, Italy, Norway and Canada.

        Seeing all those replies reminded me that – yes – a LOT of people know I exist, and they care about my books. Most of you have no idea what that means to me and to other writers. Your favorite authors need to hear from you, now more than ever, because of having to be home most of the time and unable to see you and talk to you.

 

        What touched my heart the most is realizing that when I die, my name will go on for a long time through my books. My fervent wish is that through my stories, readers will see how important history is and will make sure their children and grandchildren learn it – if not in school, then through reading the thousands and thousands of books available that tell stories of real history.

 

        One great source of that is books by Allen Eckert. Take a look. FRONTIERSMEN. WILDERNESS EMPIRE. THAT DARK AND BLOODY RIVER. GATEWAY TO EMPIRE. TECUMSEH! Mr. Eckert wrote fabulous true tales of the early history of the USA, told in such an entertaining way that it’s like reading an exciting novel. If you feel your children are not being taught (in school) about the proud history of the brave pioneers who built this country, have them read these books. Patriotism and pride come with learning the truth. Yes, we made a lot of mistakes, and are still making mistakes, but young people today have to understand how this all came about. You cannot teach change and teach how to right the wrongs unless you UNDERSTAND the wrongs, and you can’t understand the wrongs if no one teaches how and why it all happened.

      
       My books are, of course, fiction – at least the characters are fictitious. But the surrounding events and locations are real, and nothing warms my heart more than to receive comments about the history involved – finding out readers learned something they never learned in school. My “Blue Hawk” trilogy and my “Savage Destiny” series are probably packed with the most history of any of my books.

        It makes me happy to think how many years books “by Rosanne Bittner” could be out there long after I am gone, so all these 40 or so years of writing were not in vain. There are moments when I wonder who cares, but then I get your Facebook comments and your e-mails and letters, and your four and five-star reviews on Amazon and hear from you in other ways, and I realize all these thousands and thousands of hours sitting here writing my stories are worth it. Millions of words, thousands of hours of research, a sore back and neck, swollen legs, wearing out numerous computers – it’s all for the stories in my mind and heart that are begging to be written.

        Most of my blogs are written “on the spot.” Something hits me all of a sudden, and I have to write about it. Today, it was that Facebook post asking readers to tell me where they are from. I was like – WOW – I really do have a lot of readers “out there.” I am going to remember that post for a long time. It will keep me going back to the computer and help me remember somebody out there wants me to keep writing.

        This is the season for Thanksgiving. I give thanks to all of you readers who love my characters and who remind me my writing has a purpose. You guys are the best!

 

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The "Great West" (As I See It)

  

       In going through old hand-written notes and observations I recently found in an old file folder, I decided I could use some of these notes for blogs, mainly because to me these observations so beautifully describe what I see and feel when traveling America’s Great West. I live in Michigan, but I have loved the West my whole life. I have studied it, explored it, written about it, and I truly believe I lived it somewhere in the past, either as a pioneer or a Native American. It is all so real and important and beloved to me. I wrote these descriptions a good 30 to 40 years ago, and I think my love for the West comes through in these notes.

        (No date – just hand-written observations on old, yellowed paper)

       

       The silence here is total – unequalled. If one were to live in a vacuum, it could not be more silent. My ears are accustomed to the sounds of the rush of everyday life – to automobiles, radios, children babbling, TV, footsteps, barking dogs, slamming doors, the click of a typewriter, the quiet rumble of a clothes dryer or a furnace, telephones ringing, rustling leaves, semi trucks on a distant highway, a train horn blaring someplace far off, voices drifting from a neighbor’s back yard – on and on. But the silence here is such that it actually hurts my ears, ears that have never known the absence of sound.

       In some ways this temporary silence is a relief to me, for my ears sometimes get tired of “hearing” things. Noise can be as tiring as physical strain. But here there is no noise, and if I did not know better, I would think that there is also no life of any kind here. You cannot even hear the wind, for there are no trees whose leaves would rustle. The wind is more of a soft moan, as though aching to find those trees.

      I feel like I am on the moon. There is only dry earth here, and an abundance of rocks. There is a great, blue sky and a round, hot sun - and silence. I feel small and alone, and if I should call out, no one would hear me but the lizards and the hidden prairie dogs. How can one describe such vast emptiness to someone who has never seen it . . . or has never known such absence of sound? I could run all day, and all night, and all the next day, and for days after that, and still there would be no human in sight, or even a sign of one.

       

       The ”Great West,” as some call it, most certainly deserves the adjectives “great,” “massive,” “immense,” “magnificent,” “endless,” “panoramic,” “spectacular.” How many words are there to describe it? Not enough. It is a land like no other. And it pulls at me, beckons me to return. I feel as though I am destined to it, feel as though I once lived here. It is something that must be seen to be believed or understood, and even then, one has trouble grasping its vastness, simply because it is almost beyond human comprehension, just as the trillions of stars and endless “nothing” of outer space is also incomprehensible. Such things are the answer to “Is there a God?”

       

       I wonder at the brave endurance of both the Indian and the pioneer at surviving in such lonely desolation. I know I am small, and that in spite of the technological age in which I live, I am still at the mercy of God and the elements . . . and the land. I am but a spec of life, here in the middle of lifelessness, here in a land that was not formed in just a few years, but land that was carved into the face of the earth over hundreds of millions of years.

       And so, I wonder of what importance my short life will be when I put it into those proportions, and I believe I must do one great thing before I die. Hopefully, that will be to write stories that will make people realize what a great Nation we live in, and to make them love and respect America’s Great West. More . . . to make them understand what a waste it would be to over-populate, exploit and destroy one of God’s most precious creations. It is big and endless and will be just as strong and silent and vast and resilient and beautiful over more millions of years, long after man has succeeded in destroying human life. The lizards and prairie dogs and snakes and mule deer and buffalo and wild horses will still be roaming the Great West.

 

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