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When I was a kid, my father brought home the autobiography of Sid Luckman, the great Chicago Bears quarterback - probably an extra copy from the sports department where he worked. It was the first sports biography I ever read.

I was the one who took football off the back pages and put it on to page one.

When I was growing up, a lot of books affected me, but I never wrote letters to the author or anything like that. I'm always mindful that there are probably a whole bunch of people reading my books like that, too.

I get a lot of letters from people.

Fans are really important for me. And if they take pains to write me, it's the minimum that I answer myself.

I receive about 10,000 letters a year from readers, and in the first year after a book is published, perhaps 5,000 letters will deal specifically with that piece of work.

One fan wrote asking for a very specific autographed photo. He wanted me to pose in tight jeans and boots and even enclosed a sketch of how I should dress! A lot of them just say they wish they had a girlfriend like me. They're very endearing letters.

I am a football fan, yeah.