A Most Interesting Question
C.J. Adrien holding the Viking shield he made before painting it, and holding an old hatchet he found in his garage.
It has been nearly one year since the release of my debut novel, The Line of His People, and much has transpired since its release. I recently visited my grandmother who inquired about the performance in sales of the book. Rather than crunch the numbers (because my reports are monthly and there is no way to get an ‘all time’ report) I simply shrugged my shoulders to say that I wasn’t getting rich by any means. Then the question began to beckon. How many books had I sold? Surely not that many, my pockets are in no way lined with gold. Yet I felt the impulse to add everything up to see how my book was actually doing.
I compiled all my reports since September and began counting one by one each transaction in each sales territory (US, UK, Canada, and surprisingly…Germany). Everything looked exactly as I had remembered until I opened the reports beginning in March and…HOLY SHIT…where did these come from? Beginning about the time Vikings on History Channel aired their second season, the download rate for the book soared. An impressive 2600 copies were downloaded in March alone!
How, then, had I missed this? Why had I not noticed this unusual and admittedly miraculous jump? Simply put: life. I had a bad year. Yes folks, the ever cheerful Viking expert from France with an unwavering passion for history spent the last 11 months exactly where he shouldn’t have. I got married to a small town girl, she found me a teaching job in her home town, and all seemed perfect until…we got there. Although I have plenty of fodder to rant about, I shall spare everyone since life experience tells me everyone has problems, therefore complaining of any sort is futile. I would just like to take this brief moment to share with the mighty interweb that a grave injustice hath been done, and humanity is the lesser for it. Hopefully the extra terrestrials surveying the planet are not paying attention to that small town because they most certainly will never say hello to we humans based on their behavior.
Bref, je continue: The Line of His People is finally beginning to rise in the manner I had hoped. My social media is rife with people — kids, adults, and even other authors — complementing my work and wanting to chat. I am all for that, I love chatting.
I am especially proud today to say that after compiling all the numbers, the mighty Abriel Haraldsson of Herius’ story has been downloaded (this does not include physical books) over 5,000 times! My publisher Voyageur Books is ecstatic because they say this is just the beginning.
To my fans: THANK YOU. To my future fans: WELCOME.
“Our training must be difficult so that we may have an easy war,” says Oddr. And yes, this is a quote from the sequel.
I bid you all a good night as I am off to write some more of the sequel In The Raven’s Wake.
Cheers,
C.J.
P.S. The Line of His People is only $0.99 on Kindle and Nook. Now that you know it’s going somewhere, give it a try so you can say, “I read it before it was cool”.
You can also get the paperback at Barnes & Noble here, or on Amazon here.
