Interacting with fans

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Hi. I was just recently diagnosed with Asperger's. I have a few questions for other people in the arts that also have Asperger's.

How do you interact with fans?

I started off in the visual arts and went to school for filmmaking. I understand film and TV. I also have a degree in Art History. It was one of those crazy things you do in college. I found memorizing artists, titles, and dates easy, especially since I have enjoyed the visual arts. I was never a big reader and was never really taught to write. I taught myself how to write scripts. Then I had the brilliant idea of turning a screenplay into a novel and decided to self-publish it.

Since that time, I have been receiving fan mail. I write love stories, even though I don't understand love or women. My male characters exhibit my Asperger's qualities, and yet I get fan mail from women telling me that I've explained what men are like when they are in love. They wish they could have read my book earlier so that they could have avoided some of the guys that they have dated. I've gotten drunken e-mails from some fans. I've even had some women tell me that they wish they could find a guy like the one in my book, or that the guy is their favorite male character since this other series that they read.

Social interactions are hard enough for me, but the celebrity aspect of it makes it harder for me. It's like I have to relearn all of the rules. I want to interact with people who enjoy my work. I just don't know how. Does anybody have any suggestions? How have other people handled it?

Thanks for any help that you can give me.

When Myspace was a booming populace of people (a long distant past) my band amassed around 152,000 profile views, 50 thousand song plays, 47,000 friends and at least several thousand comments. For a while, we were getting 50+ comments and a dozen or so messages a day praising our music, asking where we'd be playing next (we never played live, it was actually an online only project by myself, ha!) and so on and so forth. I genuinely believe that my replies (and boy did I reply, I probably wrote back to the first 1,000 comments before becoming overwhelmed) seriously benefited my ability to communicate effectively and appropriately over the internet. Mind you, unlike an ordinary person, I was obsessed and so no matter how long their message, how strange their comment or even if it wasn't in English, I spent the time to reply and then reply to their reply and so on. Through the band, I met a couple of people that I actually kept in contact with for over a year and one that I still talk to every day from Australia and that was about three years ago. There were quite a few local women who'd discovered the band on Myspace and wanted to meet up but that felt like far too stressful a proposal and so, not wanting to dash the image of confident lead vocalist/guitarist, I made many excuses and none panned out.

Now, a few years later and with Myspace's sudden utter uselessness, I've taken down most of the original music and haven't replied to the last thousand or so messages and there's less than a trickle of activity. It's depressing (and the byproduct of a change of special interest) but basically, I really cherish the energy I put into interacting with these people and I genuinely believe that since they've already professed to enjoy the product of my creativity, they almost expected a little quirky strangeness which made the process much more pleasant . Whatever you do, be yourself, through and through. The minds behind great works are an extremely interesting thing to everyone and I think your fans would be enamored if they found out that you wrote the character's traits as a reflection of your own. I hope you continue to find success with your writing!

I was a very successful writer on FanFiction about a year ago, my most successful multi chapter story getting 100+ reviews. my most successful short story getting 30+ reviews.

Every time someone reviewed, they'll get a "thanks for the review." back, along with comments, etc. I found I'd get a lot more feedback that way; and I genuinely loved talking the fans about pointless banter.

the fiction I was writing for is notoriously for it's spurg levels. and the character I mostly wrote about is someone I highly suspect has AS, I do wonder if that was part of the reason why I was so popular, but all well.

sometimes the fans would ask me to review their work, some of it was very good... some of it... being fanfiction and all... well...
I'd always make sure to leave on a good note with the people, no matter what.

What is the name of your self-published book?
I have a collection of short stories and novellas coming out next year. There may be letters, complimentary or insulting, coming my way. I hope I can handle them well and reply in kind. I just hope they don't overwhelm me.

You have fans?

I guess I have fans as I have over 40 followers on this fanfiction site.