I’m Always Amazed…

I sold two books today. Personally, and unexpectedly.

And this isn’t the first time. But I’m still always amazed when it happens.

It’s gotten to the point that I just keep a box in my car with copies of each of the books I’ve published. This isn’t hard, since I’ve only published two myself: a 56-page, humorous but hard-to-classify novelette called The Good Book and Fantastic Defenders, the first volume of my new “Worlds Enough” anthology series. Plus, there’s a couple anthologies that my writing group put out; I should probably have some copies of those on hand, too.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I’m selling them hand over fist out of the back of my car. But it is a steady trickle.

My first sale today was a project manager named Cherlyn who’d previously read one of my other stories in beta. She stopped in to my office because she wanted to pick up a signed edition of The Good Book.

So I went down to my car to get a copy for Cherlyn. When I returned, she was in conversation with a contractor named Wayne, a guy that I’ve worked with tangentially for years. I walked up and signed her copy with something typical like:

Wayne watched me doing this. “I didn’t know you wrote books.”

“Sure,” I said. “I’m indie-publishing on Amazon. Generally shorter fiction like this.”

“What do you write?”

I said, “Mostly SF and Fantasy.” I pointed at the book. “This one’s kind of an outlier. It’s got a fantasy element, but it’s mostly about a guy getting his life back together.”

“Cool,” Wayne said. “I’ll buy one. I’d like to support you, too.” Curious, he picked up Cherlyn’s book and started flipping through the pages. “Plus, knowing you, I can’t imagine you’d put something out that wasn’t good.”

Some days it’s wicked cool to be an author.

Thanks Cherlyn and Wayne.