strange author benefits

One of the flakiest side-effects I've encountered since becoming a published author is the many many emails I receive from kids who pretty much want me to help them with their homework.

The email generally goes like this: "Dear Ms McDonnell, please I really need help. I have an assignment on writers (or an assignment on career day) due tomorrow and I need to do research on what it's like to do your job. Please, please, please, help."

There are also a few who mention that they have read Wind Follwer and were asked to analyze or review it. And could I please, please, possibly, tell them what my book's theme was all about?

Now, what do I, a former teaching assistant at a high school, think of all this?

I'll just say that I pretty much behave like a typical mom who sits down at her computer to writer her kid's term paper because heck, the thing is due today. (Okay, okay, once I wrote a paper so well that my son's college teacher suspected he had not written it and failed him for the class. I learned to write less writerly after that,) I simply can't help it...I'm a sucker for kids who bring in their homework late. Heck, I do a little procrastination myself. The only time I DO find myself getting a little annoyed is when the student is a graduate or undergraduate. I suspect because I'm thinking that by that time they should be able to think a little clearer about stuff and to at least attempt to analyze the book themselves. But even then I give them my help. I can only hope they really appreciate it.