Best Reader Email Ever

This might be the best reader email ever (reproduced below the cut). It's great because it's enthusiastic but not insane and because the details immediately make my writer ears perk up because I sense a story.I should note that while my response about said tattoo was more restrained and reasonable, Eric Schaller, the guy who did the Hoegbotton logo, immediately said "Do it do it do it do it!" like a rabid hedgehog, because he is crazy, and an enabler.But, apparently, from a follow-up email she is getting the tattoo and will send photos, which I'll post here if so.Anyway, here's a truncated version of her email, posted by permission and only listing her by part of her email addy. (My favorite part is the water-ruined City of Saints, because it is, as she notes, entirely appropriate.)Thanks, Girl in Wolf's Clothing!JeffDear Mr. VanderMeer, Maybe you can help me with this. I want to get a tattoo. I already have one. It's a very tasteful star on my left ankle (the inside of the ankle). I got it when I was eighteen or nineteen. I'm now twenty-five, so it's not like I am going crazy and getting too many tattoos.I want another tattoo and I want it to be based somehow on one of my favorite authors. This is where you come in. I thought about getting a tattoo based on Borges, but that would mean tattooing a labyrinth on my back (I'm not that creative.) To do it justice, I would have to get a tattoo much larger than I already want to go. I thought about many a Nabokov tattoo, but most of them would be indecent and I don't like the idea of having a butterfly tattoo or a chess-piece tattoo (actually, the chess-piece could be cool, but I don't play chess, let alone understand it.) I can't imagine what kind of tattoo I would get if it were to be based on something by Orhan Pamuk or Kobo Abe. There are a few other books I enjoy that I am sure could inspire amazing tattoos, but none of those books are really my favorites. I don't just want a cool tattoo; I want something with a little more meaning behind it. (And not the "I-got-drunk-and-woke-up-with-this-tattoo" or "I-picked-this-out-of-a-tattoo-catalog-my-freshman-year-of-college" type meaning, either.)Then I realized the perfect answer was sitting in front of me. A water- warped copy of City of Saints and Madmen.* I hope that this doesn't sound too crazy-fan like, but I think I would really like to think of a tattoo based on one of your books, I just have to come up with a good idea. I only discovered them this past year, but I cannot tell you how much I enjoy your writing. I read Veniss Underground just as I moved to an unfamiliar city. Everyone talks about how New York City is a super place to be when you are young, but to me it just felt like a leviathan swallowing me up. New York City, I'm convinced, is actually many cities. To my roommate, New York is hip and full of fashionable people, but I kept seeing elements of Veniss in my peripheral vision. Though Veniss was/is often scary and sad in your novel, didn't mean I didn't find it beautiful. I can't accurately describe what I love about that book, but I knew as I was reading it, it had immediately become one of my favorite books. I think, oddly enough, it helped me feel more at home. I also immensely enjoyed Secret Life and City of Saints and Madmen. Especially the first story in Secret Life. If my life were one of your stories, I would be convinced that the mice in my apartment were trying to tell me something. (Aside: It's really weird! There's a lot of construction going on next door, so there have been mice in my apartment. There are evidence of them that we all see [my roommate and boyfriend], but I am the only one that the mice feel unthreatened by. I can't tell you how many times I've been reading on the couch alone at home only to look up and see a mouse just sitting there and staring at me from across the way. Maybe it's just that I am the only one that notices them.)Anyway, before bed last night, I was flipping through my copy of City of Saints and Madmen and came upon the small image of the squid reading a Hoegbotton & Sons book. Black and white. It would fit right on the inside of my right ankle. But I am not sure. Afterall, something that is going to be on me forever, I should think it through, shouldn' t I? I guess I wanted to run it by the person responsible for the books that I have enjoyed so much. I can't quite think of something for Veniss Underground or Secret Life (a meerkat head? a pen?)I must admit, in my version of this image, I will probably have the squid reading the Book of Sand (I did my senior thesis on Borges. It would be a crime not to have him in there somewhere.) My last tattoo. I know that's what everybody says, but I mean it. I want it be something that I love (not someone I love. Getting the tattoo of your significant other's name almost guarantees the demise of the relationship.) I love reading books. I especially love your books (and Borges' books, Nabokov's books, Pamuk and Abe's books.) Even the books I don't love, I love a little because they are books.I've spent a lot of my life feeling displaced for one reason or another. The best books are the books that make me feel a little bit more at home than I did before I picked them up. While I am reading your books, they make me feel a little less alone.Thank you,Girl In Wolf's Clothing* In a stunning display of stupidity, I left my copy of City of Saints and Madmen on the windowsill during a torrential downpour. But it's okay. I think it gives the book even more character.