All’s well that ends well

So. Yeah, wow.

Last year when I offered free books, less than five downloads took place. It’s safe to say that I wasn’t expecting much.

This year, I got a nudge. Hit ALL the social media spots, they said. Blast it out, boost the signal, ask for support. So I did.

Holy shit, did I get support. Likes and shares and tags and passed on. And The Witch’s Daughter hit #8 in it’s category on Amazon’s Kindle listing, which brought MORE attention to it.

Somewhere out there, I have forty plus new readers.

And last night, seeing those figures continuing to climb past well beyond what I thought they’d get to, I knew a kind of joy that doesn’t come around very often. If you’ve been following along, you may remember I said every book is like setting a paper boat out on the ocean.

Well, that boat has been seen out there, on its journey. Put another way, Nessa lives. I truly believe that every story we read leaves a little something with us- that’s forty new people who will hopefully laugh where I meant them to laugh, and swallow hard where I got a little choked up. (Okay, okay, I cried, geeze.)

And hopefully they’ll decide they want to know what came next for her, too.

I get that its hard to support artistic endeavors in a meaningful way, one that actually HELPS. We all have the best of intentions and really want to help, but sometimes it’s not easy, or not something we personally enjoy, or we get busy or life happens.

Here’s what I’m going to ask you to remember- nine times out of ten, all it takes to be supportive is to ask ‘what’s next?’ and, if you see a chance to connect someone with an opportunity, encourage them to take the shot, do the thing, and say why not to life.

As for me, what’s next is checking my physical book inventory and preparing to take it to Ren Faire this year. It’s retooling my last idea into something closer to my own experiences, instead of trying to turn it into wish fulfillment for something I didn’t get to have. I think it’ll be stronger for it, and probably more fun to write.

And being incredibly grateful that Nessa lives. It may not seem like much to some folks, forty copies- to me, that’s a little piece of the kind of immortality I’ve been dreaming of since I first wrote ‘The End’. It’s pieces of me and the people that I’ve loved and the laughs we’ve shared being shared on a slightly broader scale.

If that isn’t magic, I don’t know what is.