Authors that you've written to or e-mailed and received a real reply back.

[muldoonthief]

@ExTank

I’ve corresponded with David Drake about tanks, armored warfare, and a Sgt.'s-eye-view of the Gulf War.

I’ve emailed David Drake at least a dozen times through his website, and he’s always taken the time to give a nice reply to my questions. Even when I complained bitterly about something terrible he did in “Fortress of Glass”.

[robby]

@pinkfreud

I exchanged a couple of letters with Spider Robinson in the early 1980s, but my main literary penpal was Isaac Asimov. Isaac and I corresponded for several years, and I treasure his missives as if they were made of…um… as if they were made of thiotimoline.

So you received his missives before he sent them?

[mswas]

@CaerieD

I’ve never written to any authors as a fan (writing to them to tell them something business related doesn’t count for the purpose of this thread, I’m assuming), but I had a friend who’s had some correspondence with Neil Gaiman in the past. She’s deaf and had originally contacted him with a question regarding the teleplay of Neverwhere. He responded back promptly and the two had a bit of a discussion about it.

Aside from that, there’s his blog, too, and he has a lot of interaction with his fans through that. He seems like a pretty awesome guy.

I met Neil on the Compuserve comic books forum back in the day. Keith Geffen too.

I used to troll Roger Ebert’s site on Compuserve when he wrote a review I disagreed with. I think he thought it was funny and realized that I was obviously a teenager.

I had a good experience with all of them.

[jackdavinci]

I’ve found Douglas Rushkoff to be very responsive. But he also teaches and has a newsgroup. I imagine authors who are also in academia would tend to be more responsive than elusive bestsellers. Actually, I imagine any author who is not yet sufficiently popular to be overburdened by correspondence, or anti social enough to be reclusive, would be fairly responsive.

Not really the author himself, but the Princess Bride has some joke in it about sending away for part of the story they weren’t allowed to print. I wrote away for it and actually got something back, although it was also a joke of sorts.

Not an author but still amusing, in elementary school my best friend wrote to Ronald Reagan and got a letter and an autographed picture back. The letter was of course a form letter, but it was written in a somewhat upbeat and personal way, which made it all the more amusing since the letter my friend had written to him was about the supposed presidential Indian curse that was slated to kill Reagan.

And of course J Sydney Jones. But he’s my uncle so that doesn’t really count Even better than his correspondence though is his taste in other authors. He sends me a book every year for Christmas and it’s always top notch.

[Baker]

James Michener, Spider Robinson, Ivan Stang, Lindsey Davis

[Tuckerfan]

David Brin and Dick DeBartolo.