News

As you can see from Jonathon’s post yesterday the comic book is out. It looks great, and the dialogue is dead on. It really, truly is GUILTY PLEASURES, not just based on the characters, or based on the book even, but taking the book and turning it into a comic book. So cool.
On other cool news, STRANGE CANDY, my anthology of short stories is number 8 on the New York times list. It’s number 5 at the Wall Street Journal, and 5 at Publisher’s weekly. STRANGE CANDY was 36 over all in sales at USA Today. Short story collections, especially with only one author doing all the stories is notorious for selling not so well. They can do okay, but they rarely make the list, and if they do, never breaking the top ten. When my agent and then my editor called me back to back to give me the news, it was the most giddy I’ve heard them in awhile, and the most relaxed happy I’ve been, ever, about making the list. Why? I mean I’ve made it higher. But always before I was either in the middle of some big tour or publicity campaign so that I was too tired or too stressed to really enjoy the news. Or, I thought I had a chance to make the list, and was already worrying about where I’d be on the list. Who was coming out that same week? Would they beat me out for number one? But now, with STRANGE CANDY, I didn’t expect to make the list. I had no expectations, so I didn’t worry about it. Hitting the list, and hitting all the lists, in the top ten, was unexpected and delightful, because it was like a surprise present. I hadn’t worried and fretted, or been dragged across the country on this one. Heck it was a short story collection so I haven’t even had to do any interviews, if at all about it. Short story collections are something a publishing house does to make an author happy, that they want to keep happy. One of the V. P.’s of publishing said, she knew it would do well, because my name was on it. Flattering, but I had actually not known what my little collection would do out there in the wide, wide world. The fact that people have responded so nicely, and so enthusiastically is amazing to me. Thank you all for liking my little stories. Thank everyone who gave such nice reviews, and all of you who bought the book. Thank everyone who made this dark horse cross the finish line so high in the lists.