James Patterson Likes My Writing

I’m sucking down pomegranite martinis at this *kinda lame* party last night and this guy keeps looking at me from across the room. After about ten minutes he comes over and asks, “Are you Lela Davidson?”

Well, of course I am and you know – people know me. He goes on to say how much he enjoys my blog and various other writing and well, it was all very complimentary. I’m pretty sure I blushed a little. But that may have been the liquor. Anyway, he finally gets around to mentioning that he’s a writer too so that’s my cue to enter booster mode.

I go on for a while in my encouraging way about how maybe he ought to join a writing group or take a class at the community college. Something like that. Well my husband must have been getting a little jealous because next thing I knew there he was by my side, arm firmly around my waist – waiting for an introduction. And of course I couldn’t introduce the charming stranger because I’d been a lot more interested in his praise than his name. He reached out a hand to my husband.

“James Patterson,” he said.

Okay – so that’s not exactly how it happened. Really how it went was that last year I wrote a book review of The Dangerous Day of Daniel X and this morning received a request from someone at Little Brown to use MY quote to promote Patterson’s work! Here’s a snippet:

Hi Lela,
James saw your review from a little while ago and thanks you for writing!

How cool is that? See how we’re on a first name basis, James and I?

Want to know what they liked? Here’s what I wrote:

“As he did with the Maximum Ride series, Patterson is once again blurring boundaries between middle grade, young adult, and mainstream fiction.”

Pretty cool, huh? It’s good to know that even if I’m never any good at writing novels, I’m a little good at writing about them!

And James, if you’re reading – I’m totally available, for copywriting. And cocktails.