Dear Librarian,
First and foremost, I want to tell you how much I appreciate all that you do. Libraries and all the people who make them possible are the heart and soul of the reading community, and for so many of us—me included—are the first foray into the fantastical world of books.
I remember when I got my first library card; I was eight years old, and for me, this was a big deal. Imagine a young girl who constantly pestered her teachers for new books in the classroom, only to discover that there was an entire building of those bound pages that I could collect and take home for free? It was like my own personal Disneyland. The first book I ever checked out from my local library was an illustrated copy of The Hobbit, which went on to be my favorite world to ever exist. A world I discovered at the library. One I would come back to over and over again throughout my childhood and then my adult life, and I owe it all to a tattered card I still carry in my wallet and the wonderful place that houses so many hidden treasures in the form of bound paper and ink.
My reading habits evolved a lot over the years, and my library card saw a lot of miles while I went from that starry eyed eight-year-old to an older teen discovering romance for the first time. From sneaking harlequins off my grandmother’s shelf to finding out that the entire wonderful world of Johanna Lindsey and Catherine Coulter were available to me whenever I wanted them—I can easily say that libraries are the reason why I’m here doing what I do today. They fed my voracious need for happily ever afters and filled my rainy days with heated tales of faraway lands and hunky lairds.
I consumed many genres at my local library—romance, thrillers, stints of the supernatural—and maybe that’s why now I feel such a strong desire to explore multiple genres in my author career today. Libraries taught me that the world is my oyster, that whatever I could imagine was hidden between the pages of a treasure tucked away on a shelf I could borrow from whenever I liked—and today I get the distinct pleasure of teaching my own children the magic of their local library. I know that someday, they will look back and appreciate theirs just as much as I still appreciate mine.
Thank you again for all that you do, and know that, for me, there will always be a special place in my heart for you and the magical place that you keep going.
With all my love,
Lana Ferguson
