Because I seem to be creatively bankrupt these days, instead of writing my own damn post, I’m going to offer you a hilarious take from Southern Comfort on the most DIFFICULT question I have to answer these days.

She writes,

...Another sticky wicket of a question is “How is your book doing?”

When my first novel came out I was bombarded with this question. And being an utter newbie I relied on Amazon for my answers and assumed my book was tanking like the Titanic. (Not by a mile, honey chile.)

I’d get all flustered and defensive as if they’d asked me “How’s the book doing… you pathetic wannabe?”

“ I don’t know how it’s doing. I won’t know until I get my royalty statements. QUIT HASSLING ME!”

Now if I’d made it to the bestseller list with my first novel I would have walked around wearing a sandwich board that said, “ Ask me how my book is doing.”

But there really is no good answer to this question. What can you say? I moved five hundred units last week? My mom and all my cousins bought multiple copies? I’m selling as many copies as the author of Seventy-five Recipes for Homemade Cheese.

After a while I finally understood that people were just being polite; they weren’t out to interrogate me. Now when asked this question, I just give a wink and say, “Not too shabby. Let’s put it this way. If I see a penny in the gutter, sometimes I won’t bother to fish it out.”

I am still in the defensive stage. I don’t KNOW how my damn book is doing. No one has told me and that is probably because it’s doing TERRIBLY and I am about to become persona-non-grata in the publishing world! I usually default to, “Well, lots of people are emailing me and telling me they like the book. I’m sure it’s about to become a word-of-mouth-favorite.”

I do have to say, that in lieu of any hard numbers, which are probably just depressing, that the reader response is the best thing that's been happening to me. It's kind of like the old days when I started this blog and all sorts of people wrote to say how much they loved it. The best part of being a writer is feeling like you've reached people. It's the most unexpected part too, 'cause you spend so much time toiling by yourself, you almost forget people are actually (if you're lucky) going to read what you write.

Oh! Here is an exciting tidbit. I have bookplates that I can sign for you. So, just in case I don't do that international tour, and you want a signed copy of BreakupBabe, e-mail me your address (breakupbabe@msn.com) and I will send you a signed bookplate. (Be patient because I am mailing-impaired.)

P.S. There are also still free books available for those who put up a banner ad or a blurb linking to my book on Amazon!

Love,
BB