What happens when the reader writes back to a book's author?

Avid reader and now brand new author Andrea Mara ponders how social media has made modern authors accessible to their fans

The other night, I caught my ten-year-old reading my copy of Let The Dead Speak by Irish crime writer Jane Casey — the first chapter involves a fair amount of blood spatter so I whisked it away and handed her something more suitable.

I tweeted Casey to tell her, and we had a good chat about books that might be more appropriate for my bloodthirsty daughter. At the same time, I got an email from a reader of my own book — she’d just finished it, and had a question about a character mentioned in the final chapter. It struck me as I replied, that 10 or 15 years ago, it wasn’t so easy to contact authors, whereas today, there’s constant online interaction between the readers and writers; to the benefit of both, I suspect.