Letter from a fan

Fan fiction.

A while back I joined a Facebook group for fans of Sons of Anarchy. Every so often I'd submit a pencil drawing just for the heck of it. It was well received. The show's got a lot of fans in spite of going off the air in 2015. Along the way I did a quick sketch for a fan who requested a specific scene based on his own 'fan fiction' take on the storyline.

Fan fiction is kinda interesting to me. I remember a classmate in 1978 who wrote a small novel on an x-fighter squadron in the Star Wars Universe (before we found out Darth Vader was Luke's Dad!)

Enter Robert Stokes.

It was during my comic book Kickstarter fulfillment, so I popped his drawing into a flat mailer along with Mayfield Eight Issues One and Two.

Quite unexpectedly, he wrote me a thank you letter, an actual 'snail mail' letter on paper! In it he talks about Mayfield Eight's Calvin Ryder:

'I got hooked into the story arc by the end of the first one. I remember people like that when I was a teen in the early seventies-...

...I see your main character coming of age in this story arc- I'm already worried about him, and I'm wondering how his outlook begins to form and change thru his growth-'

I was really touched by his taking the time to send me this. And yes, Calvin's got a lot ahead of him. Stuff that will really test his mettle.

When I came up with the story I wanted to have a lot of mean and dangerous characters, people you'd want to stay away from. They were the background, the bit players, the antagonists.

Yet the hero, the protagonist Calvin Ryder I intentionally made frail, unsure of himself, all alone. He's got to rely on his own resources to get out of this jam. And it won't be easy.

So to you, Robert Stokes, Sons of Anarchy Fan Fiction Author, I'll have to say his outlook will indeed change.

Thank you for the letter.

10454 Lomita Ave #B, Felton
United States

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