It's been a while since I have written a post and lots has happened since then, some good, some very sad. We lost one of our precious little furry ones. His name was Tevye. He was a beautiful little boy - a mini rex rabbit - who ran up and down stairs, constantly worked hard to improve the woodwork in the house and flopped with a flare that would make swashbuckling pirates hang their heads in shame. He showed us all what it meant to be brave right up until the very end and my eyes still well-up as I think of his courage and determination to gobble down any treats that were offered to him right up until the very end. I treasure the 10+ years he shared with us and I will miss him the rest of the time that I am granted on this planet. So that's the sad news. But it is now 2019 and there are miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep. And some of those miles have already proven to be very special! I have shared a wonderful Christmas with my cherished children and grandchildren. I have shared a special birthday celebration with my precious wife and others with my youngest son and my daughter-in-law. New Years Eve was spent with two wonderful friends - the conversation rolled from one topic to the next with barely enough time in between to take a breath. And then...
... one day I took a look at the sales numbers for Dark Harvest. For those of you who wonder what it is like to be on this kind of journey, I wish I could share the elation that comes from seeing what I saw that day. Kindle provides sales numbers in real-time so that an author can see how well their work(s) is doing. There are various tables and charts and the first one that I looked at showed the number of paperback and e-books sold over the last month. The numbers were good given that everyone had just come through a Christmas season where gifts of reading material may have filled stockings or shown up as packages under the tree. I didn't expect to see too many people wandering around Kindle looking for my book during this time and the sales numbers more-or-less supported this. And THEN I looked at another report. It is a report which shows how many pages of Dark Harvest have been read by people who have subscribed to Kindle Unlimited. This is a program that allows access to a library of Kindle e-Books for a monthly subscription fee. The last time I had checked this report, only one person had accessed Dark Harvest through this program, and that had been back in early October, just after the book had been launched. I didn't expect to see any activity in this chart, so when I scrolled down and saw that there had been a flurry of activity, my heart beat a little bit faster, my palms got just a little bit sweaty and I began to smile. I can't explain the excitement and the surprise of seeing that people were reading Dark Harvest and I could almost watch them do so day by day. I've posted the graphic which shows the increased activity but should explain that Kindle reports these numbers in normalized pages - it's their way of correcting for all of the various formats books can be published in. Anyway - it is hard to explain the feeling except to say that it showed me once again that Dark Harvest now has a life of its own. It is out there and people are reading it. It's like watching a starry-eyed child who has just moved out of the house, has gotten an apartment and an entry-level job and is now making it on their own. Good luck Dark Harvest! I hope that life treats you gently and that you are having fun!
