Totally Bragging

Ok, I don't want to toot my own horn, but I'm going to out of sheer disbelieving happiness.

Very early this morning, Living With the Dead: With Spring Comes The Fall FINALLY broke into the top 3000 on the Kindle store. This has been a goal for me since day one. I've come so close so many times, and at today it finally happened. I've had a nice rush of sales, and the money is certainly going to be a good thing. There are so many other reasons this makes me happy...

One is that this book is on three top 100 lists. Here's a pic:

Now, this is the one taken this morning. It's pretty awesome. But...not as good as the one I took just after noon. You'll see that the early morning one has me at rank 2,950 or so...at noon, however...

You can see that between noon and one pm, I am at 2,696. I'm so psyched about this there literally aren't words to describe how happy I am. What's more, the two kindle top 100 lists I'm on for categories are great too...

So...on the Sci/fi list I'm up there with Edgar Rice Burroughs, Phillip K. Dick and (I almost had a heart attack) Douglas FREAKING Adams! It's completely surreal to me that I could be listed near those amazingly talented and frankly classic writers. I'm not comparing myself to them, or to anyone on that top 100 list. They are my heroes, and I am shocked but thrilled to be among them. 

On the contemporary fantasy top 100, LWtD is rubbing elbows with the likes of Charlaine Harris, Laurel K. Hamilton, and Jim Butcher. I'm actually higher up on the list at the moment than several of Mr. Butcher's Dresden Files novels, which is amazing to me. I'm a huge fan of Jim Butcher, and I think he's one of the best writers of any kind of fiction out there right now. I am honored to be on the same list with him. I'm also ahead of Laurel K. Hamilton, at least one of her books, which I consider a small but personal triumph. I'm not a big fan of her work, but she IS insanely popular, so I count that an honor as well. 

I hope that in my excitement and zeal, I haven't made you think that I am saying anything especially amazing about my work, or knocking anyone that I mentioned above. I'm just so happy that enough people like my work to make this possible, and shocked at the amount of success I've reached in so short a time. I'm an indie writer. I'm not a professional like those mentioned above. They have years of practice in the craft, and I don't. I have gotten supremely lucky to have the fan base that I do, and in no way am I saying that I am better than anyone. I'm just happy to be among them, for whatever length of time I am lucky enough to be so. 

I wouldn't be making a point of saying any of that about the authors I mentioned, but I'm still working on building a career and I don't want people getting the wrong idea. When I say "I'm beating several of Jim Butcher's novels" I'm not sticking my tongue out and giving him a raspberry. He's making a mint from his books (and justifiably--they're great stuff) and I think every one of his novels is on the top 100 list for contemporary fantasy, and they stay there. I'm just trying to get across how psyched I am to be in his company, much less ahead of a few of his books for a while. 

Ok, done with that whole rant. I'm going to go try and burn off some of the energy this has put into my tired body so I can sleep enough to manage to work tonight. Thanks to every one of you that bought my blog collection, or read the blog, or told a friend about it, or just offered a kind word. This is all on you, not me. YOU made this a reality for me, and I can never thank you enough. In return, I will keep on working, improving my skills in the hope that one day I am as good as Butcher, Hamilton, Harris, Burroughs, Dick, and Adams. It makes me happy that you, my readers, like my work enough to put me past this goal. I'll keep on working for you!

Totally not bragging, though.