It's okay to meet your heroes... sometimes.
It’s okay to meet your heroes sometimes. At other times, the saying about never meeting them holds.
When I first thought of becoming an author, of tackling actual novels and not the scribbling I’d done to that point, I discovered David Morrell. His book, The Brotherhood of the Rose, became the template for my work because I figured the best way to learn how to write a novel was to take one apart and see how it worked.
I dissected The Brotherhood of the Rose in every way possible and wrote a series of godawful novels. However, that was practice. Eventually, I wrote The Dead Women of Juárez, and things took off. I may have written a lot of garbage, but everyone does at the start. It certainly wasn’t Morrell’s fault.
I moved steadily up the sales tiers until the Camaro Espinoza series debuted. I was in the big time and could pull down endorsements from significant authors like Craig Johnson… and David Morrell. They liked my work!
Morrell was quite gracious when I thanked him and has always been cordial to me in our dealings since. I consider him the elder statesman, but sharing a career and a publisher with him allowed me to call him my colleague, too. Talk about an honor.
So, yeah, sometimes it’s okay to meet your heroes. They turn out to be everything you hope they will be.
But some of your heroes are jerks; I’m not sure I should write about that.