This just popped back into my head after many years’ absence: the most annoying question I’ve ever been asked as a writer.
No, it’s not “How long did it take you to write it?” Everybody asks that. I don’t know why, but they do.
When, after much difficulty, my very first novel was published in 1986, one of my next-door neighbors, with a happy smile on his face, asked me this:
“So when’s it going to be a TV movie?”
Perish the thought that he would buy the book and read it, or even go to see the movie if they made a movie of it. He wanted it on TV. Cheap, cheap, cheap.
One thing I’ve learned over the years: people who see you every day, and talk to you, hardly ever want to read your books. And I don’t know why.