STILL CRYING

Question:

Thank you so much for your Alice series. I got the last book yesterday afternoon and I just finished reading it. I wanted to write to you to let you know how much I enjoyed reading about Alice. I am 28 years old and I’ve been reading the Alice books since I was around 13 years old. Every year I waited for the new book to come out and I was so excited to get this last book, I pre-ordered it in June from Amazon and it’s been torture to wait this long! I own all the books and I look forward to re-reading them again and again, as I have been doing over the years. I have also been sharing them with some of the girls who I mentor through my youth group at my church. I live in Maryland and my church is in Montgomery County so the girls really like reading about Alice and that she visits some of the places they frequent. I do, too!

The saddest part of “Now I’ll Tell You Everything” was when Ben dies, I’m still crying about it (possibly because it happens at the end of the book). My own dad has some health problems and we could lose him at any time, though we don’t consider his death imminent. I love Mr. McKinley and I think he is a fantastic dad, I was so sad when he died.

Lester is my favorite character because I love his wit and sarcasm, he always makes me laugh.

Anyway, I’m sure you get a lot of mail so I don’t want to make this longer than it needs to be. I just wanted to say thank you, so much, for taking the time to write these books because they meant a lot to me.

Do you ever do “Meet the Author” in this area? I would love to meet you someday if it were convenient. I have also read Shiloh and the Hartford & Malloys series — though based on your wikipedia page there are a bunch of new ones I haven’t read yet. Can’t wait to get started!

Thank you so much… and goodbye Alice… I’m sad there won’t be any more books to read about her!

 Phyllis replied:
 
I occasionally speak in this area–I spoke at the National Book Festival on the Mall in September and also at the Takoma Park Library in October, but don’t have any others planned at the moment.  Thank you so much for your email, however.  I cried when I wrote about  Ben’s death too–one of the many places I cried during the writing of the  Alice series.  It’s wonderful to know that you are sharing the books with other people.  No, there won’t be any more books about Alice, but there are SO many other kinds of books that I want to write!