Ranked #1 on Amazon Kindle Top 100 List! (So What?)

 

I have to write this REALLY fast. Please pardon hte typos; don’t have time to edit. Things change QUICK on Amazon and I have to post this while it’s still true.

In the newspaper business, we used to call stories like this a “Hey Martha.” That’s defined as: a story so stunning Billy Bob actually sets down his beer and yells, “Hey, Martha…you gotta see THIS!”

Here it is…are you ready for it?

Five Days in May just hit #1 on the Amazon Top 100 Free Books List.

Wait, hold on, there’s more. It was listed #1 in Psychic Suspense, #1 in Inspirational Fiction and #1 in Contemporary Religious Fiction. That’s 3—count them—THREE categories! None of my books has ever been on the Top 100 Amazon Anything List. And Five Days in May just went free yesterday–#1 in only 24 hours! Can you believe it? Just 24 hours!

Pause here to catch my breath. Look out at the crowd of family and friends and tweeps and strangers who accidentally wandered onto this blog and can’t find the little X to bail out.

I gaze into their faces, expecting to see mirrored there the excitement that’s on my own. That’s not what I see. What I see reminds me of a sign on the wall in a coffeehouse in Perth, Scotland: “Whatever happened to you today, keep in mind there are 1.3 billion Chinese who flat out don’t give a rip.”

Oh, you guys care. But not a whole lot, and most of you are thinking: “Ninie, get a grip. It’s not like this is the final sign of the Second Coming.” And you’re right, of course. (I looked up, didn’t see a rain of frogs. We’re good.)

Getting a book into that coveted #1 slot is a big deal ONLY to the book’s author. It’s a ho-hum to everybody else. Life as we know it on the planet will not be altered in any way by this accomplishment. In truth, it’s one of the most ephemeral accomplishments in publishing. While I’m writing these words (I’m typing as fast as I can!) some other book has probably already bumped my book down to second place.

Sobering.

Gut check here: Ranking #1 on Amazon’s Top 100 List does not matter diddley squat. Fun, but of no lasting consequence. But something way more important has happened that does matter, something I’ve wanted all these years, yearned for, worked and struggled for. Readers all around the world will plop down on a comfy couch on some sunny/rainy/foggy Saturday morning/afternoon/evening. They’ll snuggle into a pair of warm slippers, open Five Days in May and read these words:

        “It dropped out of the sky at 3:41 p.m. central daylight time on Friday, May 10, 1963 into a field in southeastern Oklahoma eight miles west of Tishomingo. It was so big you could have seen it from Tishomingo if it hadn’t been dark as midnight there, hailing hunks of ice the size of hockey pucks. But you could see it from Madill, eleven miles away. Well, the top of it anyway. And the monster super-cell thunderstorm that birthed it, you could see that for more than a hundred miles in every direction.

        It didn’t look like a tornado, though. At well over a mile wide and eight miles tall, it looked like a bubbling wall, like a curtain the greenish-purple of a day-old bruise coming down onto the stage after the last act of a play.”

Thousands of readers are settling in, willingly suspending their disbelief, easing down into a world I created, walking around in it, having a look-see. They’re meeting people who are as dear to me as family. Getting to know them, like them and care what happens to them.

And that’s enough. Way more than enough. If I don’t sell a single book after this free run is over, that’s fine. (Who gets into the writing business for the money? Please.) I’ve planted a seed now. If the seed’s good enough, it’ll grow. All I’ve ever asked is a chance to plant a seed.

So, do rejoice with me over my TEMPORARY status as a best-selling author. Because it symbolizes what really does matter. People are reading my book.