Reader thanks from my childhood autograph book: Ray Bradbury

I recently came across my childhood autograph book, and the recent #readerthanks posts on Twitter inspired me to share this page.

I always loved reading, but it wasn’t until I read Ray Bradbury‘s Dandelion Wine that I became aware of style in writing. I’m generally a fast reader, but for Ray Bradbury’s books I slowed way down so I could savour the language. Reading Ray Bradbury’s books also helped me get hooked on sf/fantasy early on.

Note re: autograph page. For every autograph I received, I found a image of the author, researched and typed up a bio, and also wrote out the author’s name by hand in calligraphy.

Another gem in my autograph book: a manually typed note from Stephen King! With corrected typos, even! I’ll have to share that in a future post.

In case you’re wondering how Ray Bradbury ended up sending me his autograph… When I was hoping to get someone’s autograph, I wrote to the publisher with my request and a self-addressed stamped envelope for a reply. I was SOOOOOOOO excited when I got replies!