, thank you so much for reading The White Deer!

Talking about books is one of my very favorite things in the whole world, and the opportunity to talk about my own books is just...beyond thrilling. Thank you for your offer in the Tamora Pierce Unofficial Fan Community to read The White Deer of Kildare!

This introductory email will contain:

1. Timeline & logistics of this focus group
2. General thoughts while reading
3. About me — my first Tamora Pierce experience
4. Email logistics

Timeline & logistics for this focus group

I will send emails from this address in this newsletter format. You can always reach me by replying to this email, or directly at cmmforrest@gmail.com.

I was planning on sending out a questionnaire about a week after people received the book, but I've already had requests for it, so I will send it out sooner. If you haven't had a chance to read yet, that's fine! You can find it when you're ready.

I will send out the questions in Google Forms. If you have any tech problems with it, let me know, and I can send it in an alternate format.

I have the main set based on "The White Deer," and after that some questions about another cover and blurb. Once I can incorporate feedback, I will probably have a follow-up questionnaire. I will keep everything short and mostly multiple choice answers, so they are quick to fill out, with some space for a longer answer if you have more you want to say.

Timeline — I will send out the main questions this week (January 20-26th). The first set of answers would be the most useful to me within the next 2 weeks, and I hope to wrap up this focus group within about a month, so near the end of February.

If you get to the story later and still want to help, I am sure that I will have other questions and your input will always be valuable! Just respond to this email.

If the story was not for you, or the questionnaire is adding stress — it's fine. I understand. You can unsubscribe or just ignore the questions, and The White Deer of Kildare is still my present to you as fellow book-lovers.

General thoughts/questions while reading

The feedback I am looking for is around the following topics. You don't need to reply to this email—these are the type of questions that will be on the questionnaire. Some people find it less stressful to know ahead of time, or they like to formulate thoughts slowly; or if this is distracting you can skip this section!

• if the cover and blurb accurately signal to fantasy readers what they will be getting
• how dark or scary the story really feels
• what author or book this is similar to ("if you like X you will also like The White Deer" etc)
• imagery that fits the story

About me: My first Tamora Pierce experience

I am 44 years old (I feel like generation matters in how we first experience authors!), and I found the Alanna books on the YA shelf of my library when I was in junior high. The YA shelf was a big deal at the time. I grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, and we had a big beautiful library, with a huge decorative entrance and a fountain which made ice sculptures in the winter, and an entire wing for the children's section. There was one shelf for YA. You walked past it right by the entrance, which was perhaps to allow adults to browse the books too, but also meant it was closer to the draft from the doors than any cozy seating. I don't remember if anyone told me I was not allowed to look at that shelf until a certain age, but I do remember that I felt Very Grown Up when I started checking out books from the YA shelf, and Alanna was one of the Very Thrilling, Very Big books that I found. It even had.....(whispers: sex) in it!

I have to admit—at the time, I definitely thought Alanna should have married Jon. I didn't understand the appeal of George, who seemed rough and too old and not very honest. I think I was also very loyal to Jon because Alanna had fallen for him first, so I fell for him too.

I read the Alanna series several times in junior high, and my best friend also read it and we talked about how Very Thrilling it was. At that age, I was also reading Anne McCaffery's Pern stories, Robin McKinley, "The Wizard of Earthsea" books, and those authors pulled me upstairs to the main stacks. (Also, probably I had finished everything even vaguely interesting on the YA shelf. Singular.) I read every fairy tale retelling I could find, which is amusing to me now, because there is no way any one person could read every single fairy tale retelling any more. However, I was never an exclusive fantasy reader.

My library didn't have more Tamora Pierce books, and I didn't know about any others...until many years later, when I had pre-teens of my own. I went searching for new books and re-read books I had loved. I decided not to give some of them to my kids (F'lar really shakes Lessa an awful lot), but Alanna had stood the test of time—and then I promptly devoured the entire rest of the Tamora Pierce canon. (Also, I figured out that George was the one who allowed Alanna to be herself, which is why he's part of the happy ending, although I still have a soft spot for Jon.)

Now, the library where I live now has an entire YA section, with many shelves of books, comfortable seating, board games, meetings for queer teens, and so much more. In the Y reference section, there is an entire shelf of fairy tales from all over the world—never mind retellings in every single fiction section. I'm glad to see so many options for readers, and so many choices that could draw young people into the world of books and give each of them an opportunity to feel seen, and I hope to contribute stories that make the world a better place.

Email logistics

I will never share your email address or use it for any purpose other than this focus group.

To increase the chances of seeing the emails that you want to see from me, the people who are knowledgable in the ways of technology suggest:

• add this email address to your contacts, or even your starred contacts
• click on something in the email

Apparently if you click on a link, it signals to your email server that you want to see further emails like that—kind of like giving a treat to a puppy when he's sitting nicely. So here is the happy little link I include with my welcome email, so you can click through and help train your email server.

Happy link

Thank you again for reading "The White Deer" and your willingness to share your thoughts!

Best wishes,

Christy Matheson, author

I am with Malin, one of my three writing assistants. Among many other important jobs, he ensures that the ceiling fan does not kill me. So far, I am still here and the ceiling fan is still on the ceiling.