For the readers new to my writing, I'm a journey not a snack. You are not getting dessert in a single dose of a story. It's what my readers have come to expect, it's how I believe love works--well, true, sustaining love--and everything flips in Susan's world once the other character POVs tie in. And yes, I freely admit at times my characters are epic, their world dramatic, and filled with impossible blended with the ordinary. But always woven through my tales are basic truths about love and life...well, the basic truths I've learned.
I've found an interesting trend with The Manny: readers who have read my Half Shell and Sand & Fog books, love Graham Carson. They got to know him first in The Girl of Sand and Fog, his character, his steadfastness, and his unrelenting common sense and kindness in how he dealt with Kaley.
I've also found that I am an acquired taste as an author, but that's because I learned long ago the person the world sees is rarely the person we are inside and that's what I do with my characters. It would be so much easier, probably happier and more profitable, to write characters and a story in a proven for success way, but that wouldn't be me and that wouldn't be honest for me--well, not honest the way I've experienced the journey called life. And that is what I'm doing, writing what I've learned of life, in an epic fictional universe.
The Manny has been my strongest first 3 days of a release ever. It's #3 Amazon US LGBT Lit, and #1 Gay Fiction in the UK. The readers( probably just my steadfast Parker Universe readers) are continuing onward reading the second book Pistol Whipped, which I released without promotion and just let it saunter out into the market place, and 7 days later it's on 3 top 100 Amazon lists.
I should probably be happy, The Manny is selling well and the second book in the series is starting to pickup, but I'll be honest, I'm as fragile as the next gal. It would be nicer if you loved me. But today....OY. But I'm a tough bird. I raised a house full of girls. Boy they hated me some days and some days I was the best mommy in the world. So I'm holding tight to my mantra that used to say inside my head while raising teenagers: Susan, if they don't love you today, they'll love you tomorrow.
And I'm too far in releasing my Parker Universe to change the way I unfold a story.
So for those of you who are not pleased with The Manny, I'm sorry I disappointed you. I told the story the only way I know how.
For those of you who enjoy this long journey we're taking in my fictional universe, thank you so much for the kind notes, and continuing on with me in each new book.
But to both those who like my work, how I tell and story, and hate my work, how I tell a story, thank you so very much for giving me a chance between the pages of one of my books. I'm still overwhelmed that anyone would take time to spend time with me in a book. I appreciate both the praise and the criticism. Both of them make me work harder. Both of them are necessary for life to be all that it should: fun, heartbreaking, sad, joyful, happy and moments of agony...Oh wait, that's the Parker Universe and the Lock & Loaded series won't be different.
As ever I wish you Peace.