I grew up in Bisbee, Arizona, in the fifties, a time when the only books on sale in town were the paperbacks on the spinning rack located at the front end of the Warren Drug Company,\u00a0 But even there and then, books with covers emblazoned with the words “NYTimes Bestseller” were the ones that caught the eye.\u00a0 That\u2019s still true today\u2014making the list counts.<\/p>\n
This week the numbers are in for Field of Bones, and they\u2019re pretty terrific!<\/p>\n
NYTimes Bestsellers\u2014#15 hardback fiction and #7 combined print\/e-book<\/p>\n
WSJ\u2014#10 hardback fiction and #5 e-book<\/p>\n
USA Today\u2014#10 all formats.<\/p>\n
Whew!\u00a0 Seems like a home run to me, and I\u2019m here to thank all of my loyal readers who made that possible.\u00a0 Thank you!!!\u00a0 And thank you, too, to the many readers who have sent me notes saying that Field of Bones kept them up way past their usual bedtimes. That\u2019s always fun to hear.<\/p>\n
But in among all the Field of Bones correspondence was one with a subject line of: Walker Family.\u00a0 Before I opened the e-mail, I could only read the subject line and the first few words of the message:\u00a0 Thank you for saving my life.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not the first time I\u2019ve received a message like that.\u00a0 On September 10, 2001, I was in Toronto, Canada, doing a book signing for Hudson News at a convention for Airport Managers from around the world.\u00a0 At noon that day, I sat down and signed 400 books which were then handed out for free to conventioneers.\u00a0 When the signing ended, I managed\u2014just barely\u2014to make the critical flight connections that had me at home in Seattle on 9-11.\u00a0 I was home.\u00a0 All those people in Toronto weren\u2019t.\u00a0 And one of them sent me an e-maill saying that having my book to read during that awful time \u201csaved her life\u201d because it took her away from the grim reality of what was showing on TV.<\/p>\n
When I saw last week\u2019s message from Heather Cameron in Harwinton, CT, I thought this was going to be something similar.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t, and I\u2019m reprinting it here:<\/p>\n
Thank you for saving my life.\u00a0 Today when I was having chest pains, thinking it was heart burn and my arm was throbbing and tingling, I remembered the Walker Family book where\u00a0 Brandon had a heart attack.\u00a0 Instead of ignoring my symptoms, I went to the hospital.\u00a0 And yes, I was having a heart attack.\u00a0 So thank you.\u00a0 Your books do more than entertain.<\/p>\n
Goosebumps anybody?\u00a0 I had them again just now when I reread it!\u00a0 I\u2019m delighted to tell you that Heather is out of the hospital and recovering, partially due to the fact that she received treatment in such a timely manner!\u00a0 In other words, people who may not have read the Walker books should probably take note of the words in Heather\u2019s e-mail.\u00a0 It might be life-saving information for one or two blog readers as well.<\/p>\n
I write \u201cgenre fiction.”\u00a0 I\u2019ve often jokingly said that I write books with “no socially redeeming value whatsoever.”\u00a0 I\u2019ve also mentioned more than once that my books “can be found in better bus depots everywhere.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m allowed to say that because I write to entertain.\u00a0 I tell stories.<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, occasionally people come up to me in public and sneeringly remark, \u201cOh, I don\u2019t read murder mysteries.\u201d\u00a0 I get that.\u00a0 They\u2019re telling me that they are too important and that their time is too valuable to waste any of it on reading \u201cgenre fiction.\u201d\u00a0 They are certainly entitled to have that opinion although I think it\u2019s rather rude of them to say that to me, especially at book signings!<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, the next time it happens, I don\u2019t think it\u2019ll bother me nearly as much as it has in the past.\u00a0 I\u2019ll simply remind myself about Heather\u2019s e-mail, smile at the literary snob in front of me, and tell him or her to,\u00a0 “Have a nice day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yes, making the lists is important, but Heather\u2019s note was even more so.\u00a0 Something I wrote made a difference in someone\u2019s life, and little things like that mean a lot!<\/p>\n
Thank you, Heather.<\/p>\n
PS. Heather just sent me a note saying that Joanna and Field of Bones kept her company when she was in the hospital. Yes, that\u2019s the ancient sacred charge of the storyteller\u2014to beguile the time\u2014and those days in the hospital made for time in need of beguiling.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I grew up in Bisbee, Arizona, in the fifties, a time when the only books on sale in town were the paperbacks on the spinning rack located at the front end of the Warren Drug Company,\u00a0 But even there and then, books with covers emblazoned with the words “NYTimes Bestseller” were the ones that caught […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[33,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-qZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1673"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1674,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673\/revisions\/1674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}