10/05/2009 08:31:15

Thank you so much for the compliment [blush].  I'm glad you are finding it useful:-)

VespidGirl wrote: Hi! Personally, I love your feild guide and can say it is the best that I own! I carry it with me to school and when I'm out and about! Just wanted to let you know that! ^_^

09/15/2009 15:59:46

Hi! Personally, I love your feild guide and can say it is the best that I own! I carry it with me to school and when I'm out and about! Just wanted to let you know that! ^_^

01/13/2009 23:06:52

Hi Eric,

I have a copy of your Field Guide in my hands that by coincidence just arrived in the mail today! It looks great! I really like the "turtleback" cover material... substantially sturdy and durable, yet flexible and lightweight for field use. Seems weather/gunk resistant too... like you could wipe it off easily without staining if necessary.

Also prominent to my liking are the color-coded divisional sections... they seem really helpful to quickly find the section you need.

Eager for Spring and Summer to get here so I can start actually using it, instead of just enjoying browsing through!

Best of luck on your sales... You and Ken did a great job!!!

Becky

01/13/2009 08:53:31

Bugs in Cyberspace just made my day. Not only are his comments a great birthday present (and I'm 'not' THAT young!), but this comes at a time when I'm trying to overcome a publishing failure. One thing you should know about writing: having one success does not guarantee you will ever be published again! Agents can be a bitch, editors can be awful, and the entire publishing industry is really suffering from economic woes right now. So, it is really, really hard to get anyone to even consider a book proposal, let alone offer a contract to execute it.

Hearing comments like this is very inspiring, and helps one get through lean times. Thank you.

Bugs in Cyberspace is quite eloquent himself, and I hope he pursues his own book projects. I'm happy to help anyone out there with a good idea to find a potential publisher for it. Many of the best insect books are published overseas in the UK. We need North American publishers to do more books about arthropods.

Again, thank you very much for the compliments.

Sincerely,

Bug Eric

01/13/2009 07:59:56

Frustration...I just spent 40 minutes typing a reply to this and then hit the "previews" link in the post above. Everything I'd written was deleted when the link failed to open up in a NEW window. When I hit "back" on my browser...the comments box was empty.

I'm going to attempt to retype everything, because I was really inspired...so here goes...

Eric,

I knew you had to be somebody pretty special, as I've enjoyed each and every post you've put on this website so far. I don't believe we have ever exchanged correspondence
before, but let me share with our audience what your work means to me. I only now realize who you are.

Field Guides...

In 1982, when I was 8 years old, my uncle bought me Simon & Schusters Guide to Insects. Eighteen long years later, I collected my first Plusiotis (now Chrysina) gloriosa in
Arizona and finally saw that photo come to life...magical moments in life!

In the year of that Arizona trip, I obtained a copy of the Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects & Spiders. It was great to have a second field guide as many species were not duplicated.

Most recently, during the last week of August 2008, I visited to Desert Museum in Arizona. I purchased your book there for $18.95 and it was invaluable while out in the field collecting for the remainder of my trip. My nose was buried in it the entire flight back to Oregon and the time did fly!

Of all three books, I can say with all certainty that yours is my favorite (sentimentality aside). It blows the other two books out of the water in terms of species pictured. Not just that...in nearly all cases, it shows the species I want to see and that I would want other hobbyists/collectors to see.

One thing I would like to see is expansion on the native Stagmomantis spp. I own Mantidforum.Net and am a mantis dealer and information resource for mantis hobbyists for many years now. Along with the Chinese Mantis, the following three Stagmomantis species are often encountered and discussed in the US:

California Mantis
Bordered Mantis (S. limbata)

You did mention S. carolina in the book, of course.

Having cultured nearly 100 species of phasmids, I can express my gratitude of your selection in that section. It would be neat, though probably irrelevant, to see our country's only winged phasmid, (FL Keys) A. mayeri, mentioned. (In Paul Brock's "Amazing World of Stick and Leaf-Insects he lists 14 species of Timema, while your book references the number 10.)

The grasshopper section is all-around excellent, in my opinion. I didn't see Poecilotettix pantherina.

Very happy to see Capnobotes and Neobarretia featured in the guide! And the Grigs! I want to go find GRIGS right now! I live in Oregon...tell me where! Also happy to have seen my first live Tropidischia xanthostoma last summer/spring. Had a shot at culturing them, but I failed. I don't recall seeing Capnobates in any previous guides. Very impressive bugs! I brought one back with me and what a fantastic noise it made on a few occasions. I often sleep on a futon in my bugroom and it was rather startling when it did it the
first time a full month after I brought it home!

And good job with the must-sees in Aquatic "bugs"! Saw my first toad bug 2 years ago in an E. Oregon stream.

Excellent to see both the Thasus and the Acanthocephala pictured.

I would like to see expanded sections on other terrestrial arthropods, but I'm only complaining because you asked! The guide is amazing and such a helping hand for all the people like myself that are constantly expected to know EVERYTHING about bugs just because we have a few pet bugs.


I could go on and on (that is the wonderful nature of this hobby).

Bottom line...This field guide is the best and truly easy to use!

Sometimes I feel like an outsider even in a forum like this. I'm a bug generalist and though I share the hobby with other lovers of live "pet" bugs, I am a nature lover first and a pet keeper second. In nature, there is no greater expression of diversity than in bugs. As a hobbyist-collector-appreciator, I can walk out into my own backyard and find something I have never seen before, after 34 years of looking! It is an absolute joy to go to new places. When you are a bug-enthusiast, you are never bored. Even in the most unexpected places you will find something amazing and new. Look closer and you will find bugs living on bugs!

I'm completely obsessed with bugs. I just got done reading Diversity of Life by E. O. Wilson. I'm currently reading the great travel/natural history story of Alfred Russel Wallace "The Malay Archipelago". I just finished writing my 13 page trip-narrative on my Arizona collecting adventure for Invertebrates Magazine (coming in the March issue?). Last night I re-watched part 1 of 5 of Life In the Undergrowth. About to go watch part 2! I just want to quit my job and stop sleeping and learn about bugs all day, every day!

Everybody that loves bugs should have this field guide. I actively seek the strangest foods to eat. By eating these strange foods, my appreciation for the diversity of ethnic foods increases and increases. The more you are able to understand the world around you and see the patterns and learn to enjoy the various sensual experiences, the more you will be able to enjoy your life. No rainbow rivals the elytra colors of SOOO many beetle species. No captive pet tarantula replaces the experience of finding them in the wild, collecting the first ten, then finding ten more...and finally letting 5 of your first ten go because you realize how many there really are out there (and how few you need)! Still, not all species are so common. And most people don't know that only a small fraction of invertebrate species even have names. We have just begun to classify species of bugs. Sometimes I think I should just get rid of all my live bugs and spend all my time contributing photos and time to the following site:

http://eol.org/content/page/who_we_are

There are so many directions to go in this hobby...live, dried, photographs, writing, conservation...but the common denominator is bugs.

By the way, thank you for years of contributions to one of my eternally favorite websites:

http://www.whatsthatbug.com/buglinks/

(okay, that was a bit self-promoting too)

Also, on Bugguide.Net, of course.

But, truly, you have done so much for the people that casually peek into the world of bugs AND for those of us whose lives revolve around bugs...our entire lives! I would ask all hobbyists to support this special author. Few influential authors of bug books are young enough to be online, expert enough to have SO many answers to SO many questions and considerate enough to participate in our hobby on multiple levels. I'm really happy to see that Eric Eaton is on Insectgeeks.com!

I covered most of what I had originally said, with a few additions and unfortunate substractions, no doubt. I hope I didn’t scare potential readers away with such a long response!

Peter Clausen-
Bug-lover
BugsInCyberspace.com
Mantidforum.Net
Roachforum.com
Beetleforum.Net
formerly, the Bidabug.org auction and wiki (now defunct)