Amazon recently sent me an email telling me my Amazon Author Rank was 11616. I’m not much into ranking. Unless you’re #1, nothing good ever comes from it. Although I do confess a soft spot in my heart for #2. Always have, always will. But 11616 I like. Eleven is mystical. Sixes are sexy. One is one. A good number all around.
But then I clicked through to the Amazon Ranking page. I couldn’t find my rank at 11616 anywhere. I found it at 87857 and change. Found it again at 352,000- something (out of 400,000 – not bad!). Couldn’t find my 11616 ranking anywhere. The moral of this story is: Don’t click through. And no more ranking.
If you bought your copy of my book a long time ago, back when we thought the release would be in the Spring, you might have received a few emails from Amazon too. Finally maybe even a book? If so, thanks for shopping. It was people like you (Auntie Joyce, Lori Schwartz, all you others) who catapulted me into the imaginary 11616 stratosphere for a bright, shining moment.
If you haven’t yet purchased the book and you live in the LA area, I’m working on pulling together some kind of event and promise I’ll let you know when it is. Some of us still believe in the beauty of bookstores, and I’d like to celebrate my dinosaur artifact in a proper dinosaur museum. Maybe it will take place on 1/16/16? You never know.
I recently traveled to the Brooklyn Book Festival. Based on everything I have read about it lately, Brooklyn is the coolest place on the planet. After farting around town for a few gorgeous days, I can say Brooklyn is pretty damn good. Brooklyn zip codes run from 11201 through 11231. Pretty damn close. But no city has a zip code of 11616. Too bad.
You want to know what Brooklyn doesn’t have? Lobster rolls from Hammonasset Beach. I wasn’t even hungry, but somehow the whole thing ended up in my stomach. 11616 calories. Yum. I thought I had a picture of one, but I don’t, so here’s a picture of a building in Brooklyn instead.
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