Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 21:54:37 -0400
From: (E-Mail address withheld at request of author)
Subject: "Naked Through the Snow ... "
To: "Sailor Jim Johnston" (sailor_jim2002@yahoo.com)

Dear Sailor Jim,

Back on May 23, in the e-mail you sent me along with a copy of your book, you wrote:

**Thank you once more for the loan of a bar, complete with Irishman. (Feel free to borrow a cup of concept in return.) I hope you decide that I put them to good use.**

You did, sir, you did.

I've been slowly working my way through NAKED THROUGH THE SNOW as deadline pressures allow--I've been keeping it in the bathroom, in other words--and I am very impressed. You're welcome to borrow my bar and tender anytime.

It's the most consistently interesting and entertaining nonfiction book I've read in a long time. You are one of the world's great storytellers--and it seems Fate, sensing this, has punished you with an amazing life, to supply material. I've read several chapters aloud to Jeanne, and she's enjoyed them as much as I have. (Then she makes me put the book down and go back to work. You are a textbook example of why I dare not hang out in alt.callahans: that way lies bankruptcy.)

My highest professional compliments, and thanks from both of us for sending us a signed copy of NAKED THROUGH THE SNOW. I'm proud to have played a part, however peripheral and faint, in its creation and publication. I hope it sells a million copies and brings you a thousand new friends.

--Spider Robinson