From a BIG fan

Hello! I just wanted to say that I am a BIG fan of the Alice series. I love all of them, I’ll be honest I grew up with Alice and I always felt she was my best friend in the whole world, but I only recently read the prequels. My most favorite book in the series is Now I’ll Tell You Everything because that’s where Alice and everyone else gets their happy ending and her being in her 60s makes it all the more beautiful because it just shows how far she’s came even when there were times she thought she wouldn’t make it. Did you cry when you ended the series? I know I did because it felt I was saying goodbye to a really dear friend and I was happy because she and her friends were happy and retiring, Alice and Patrick got married and had children and a grandson and were planning on traveling the world together. Personally, Alice and Patrick FINALLY getting married and being together forever was one of my favorite parts because I was hoping they’d get together since The Agony of Alice, I always thought they were a power couple, SO THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR LETTING HER MARRY PATRICK! and thank you for giving me my Childhood best friend who I could look up to, I hope you are staying healthy and are living an amazing and peaceful life, I wish you and your family the best life possible!

What a lovely letter!  You made my day.  Yes, I did get tears in my eyes when Alice and Patrick finally married.  And it was a HUGE relief when I finally finished the last book.  Somewhere along the way, writing approximately 3 books for each remaining year of Alice’s life up to age 60, I figured out there would be about 28 books. And since I only wrote one Alice book a year (each book took 6 months to write, and I spent the other 6 months writing some other kind of book) I began to worry a little bit that something might happen to me–sickness or an accident or something– that would make me end the series before she ever married Patrick.  So I finally hurriedly wrote a final book, put it in a fireproof box in my office, with a letter to my two sons, telling them that if anything happened to me before I’d written the final Alice book, they should send this manuscript to my editor.  I’m so glad nothing bad happened to me, because that manuscript wasn’t very good, and I’m glad I was able to take my time and write a better one.  My favorite incident of all was the way Alice and Patrick met up again after all those years…  Thank you so much for your good wishes!