Wednesday, September 19, 2012

as long as you love me

Today was, by turns, frustrating and fantastic. Frustrating because I went to all that trouble sending out a nicely formatted, spellchecked email to my fan mailing list (and y'all know how much I hate email, since some of you have been waiting years for replies) announcing that Heiress was free on Amazon - only for Amazon to raise the price overnight, before most people would have opened it. The shame, it burns. Also frustrating because the speaker I lined up for the November romance meeting turned her nose up at the $50 honorarium and demanded $500, which I have no intention of giving her, but now I need to scramble to find a speaker. I discovered all of this when I woke up at 6:30 for my flight, which was not particularly welcome news.

But, Terry took me to the airport, I had breakfast at Gordon Biersch before boarding, and my flight was entirely uneventful. Also, I was in the bulkhead row, aisle seat, and there was actually a seat between me and the window guy - when does that ever happen? So I daydreamed about Caro and Westbrook (no, you don't need to know those names, unless you read Heiress; they are secondary characters whom I have a novella idea for, and I had written a little of it in Mexico a lifetime ago, so I need to think about them and figure out the plot). And then I finished CLOUD ATLAS, which I really, really enjoyed. And then I landed in Newark, grabbed my bag, found the train, successfully took the train to Manhattan, found a cab, and made it to Ritu's place...

...where I snuck into her building just as she was leaving for work. I rode back down the elevator with her, she ran off to her job, I came back up and stowed my stuff (and checked email and Amazon rankings, etc.), and then had a two-hour dinner at a sushi place she recommended. I will not comment on the fact that she recommended it for their two-for-one drinks rather than their sushi, but as it turns out, their sushi was great and their two-for-one drinks were as advertised. So I had two (v. full) glasses of wine and some supper (I have no desire to move to New York, but having restaurants be open until at least eleven is v. welcome) while reading the first 20% of RIVETED, the latest release by my favorite steampunk romance writer Meljean Brook. I will claim the wine as a business expense, since I need it to fall asleep now (it's 11:22 here, but that's only 8:22 in California, and I have grand plans to get up at 7:30) so that I can make it to lunch with my agent tomorrow.

But the fantastic news is that my pricing snafu and extreme embarrassment was rewarded rather than punished - while I got a couple of sad emails from fans, my little jaunt to the top of the free 'bestseller' list translated into paid bestseller success - and Heiress is currently the #1 paid Regency romance in the entire Kindle store! It's also the #6 historical romance and ~#200 in the entire Kindle store - so that's pretty awesome. Granted, it's $0.99, so that's small potatoes - but a much bigger pile of small potatoes than the small pile of big potatoes I was selling before. And with that dubious effort in potato math, I shall leave you - goodnight!

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