The Week The Book Became a Bestseller
OK, OK. I admit it. When your first book is published you are over the moon, elated, delighted. It’s almost like having a baby. Well maybe not exactly but you get the point. Then, before long — weeks, days, minutes, really — you start watching the numbers. You go to Amazon three and four times a day (actually more but I don’t want to sound too crazy) and check your status.
You go in bookstores and ask if they have copies of your book — hoping the sales clerk hasn’t looked at the photo on the jacket cover. “You know I’ve heard it’s a really great book! Sure would love to see it in you store.” There, I’ve come clean.
But when you finally hit a best-seller list, it was all worth it. And this week I found out that Dairy Queen had, in fact, made it to the SIBA list — #14. SIBA, Southeastern Indepenedent Booksellers Alliance, is a mighty list and I was proud to be on it — if even for one week. Be on the lookout, though, because I intend to climb my way back.
Joshilyn Jackson, My BFF
Some people get giddy when they meet a Hollywood star. But having lived in L.A. for ten years, it takes a bit more than that to get my heart racing. Now put another writer in my path and you’ll find me stumbling for the right words to say.
Last week, I met best-selling author Joshilyn Jackson in Oxford, Mississippi. Joshilyn (author of the newly-released The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, Between, Georgia, and gods in Alabama) and I were doing a radio gig together — the famed Thacker Mountain Radio show. It’s a live program with at least 200 human bodies in the audience.
The really nerve-racking part of it is that you are carefully timed. I had precisely 12 minutes to talk about my book — no more, no less. And there’s no big clock in front of you carefully guiding you through your allotted time.
I thought I was the only one feeling nervous, anxious, sweaty, clammy. After all, I was the novice, the Thacker Mountain Radio virgin so to speak. But just minutes before the official hand signal queing me to take my place on stage, I thought about walking right out the back door. Who would even notice if I was gone? Heck, probably most everyone there had come to see Joshilyn anyway.
But then I saw her pat her chest with her hand as if she was trying to calm a racing heart. Ah, I thought, I love this woman!! This beautiful, clever, witty writer, whose books I adore, was just as nervous as I was!
We had bonded, friends for life, sisters in the sorority of authorial women. Now Joshilyn may not be aware of the importance of that connection, that singular moment in time but that’s not really important. Afterall, it’s just a matter of perception, and from where I’m sitting, looking through my rose-colored glasses, we are best friends forever!
And by the way, I did my 12 minutes right on time with no clock, no mess-ups, no fainting and no projectile vomiting!
The Women in Dickson, Tennessee
I want to personally thank the Burns Book Club of Dickson, Tennessee for having me down to their hometown last week for their monthly bookclub meeting. The fellowship, the food (oh my gosh you should have seen this cake from the local Dairy Queen — Dilly Bar on top and everything), the book discussion was all wonderful!
I have some new friends and that’s been by far the best thing to have come from this book tour.
Renee thanks for making it happen!
Lots of love,
Susan
Thank You
To everyone who has taken the time to write and tell me how much they have enjoyed Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen, THANK YOU. It is very touching to know that not only did you choose to read my book but then you made the extra effort of sharing your thoughts. Needless to say, I have been extremely touched by all the well wishes.
Of course, it must also be obvious to you all now that I am a terrible blogger! I’m not sure why that is — maybe some kind of techno-phobic issue I have yet to tackle. But I am going to do better. I am making a New Year’s resolution, here on May 27th, to blog weekly. And for every week missed, well, I promise to eat yet another Dilly Bar — hardly a punishment but a promise nonetheless.
Stay in touch — as will I!
Susan
Dairy Queen Book Club
Hi Ladies! Let me know if you all decide to have a book club meeting at the Mount Juliet. I’ll come and help you celebrate — with a Dilly Bar of course!
Best,
Susan Gregg Gilmore
A Dilly Bar!
Only thought it was appropriate just days before my book is released to head back to Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, and enjoy a Dilly Bar at the very same Dairy Queen that my grandfather took me to every Sunday after church.
Counting the Days
My first novel will be released in just a little more than three weeks. Only in the last few days have I really begun to believe it!
Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen was bought more than year ago. I’ll never forget the day. We were moving into our new home here in Nashville, and I was, of all things, unpacking books. The phone rang. It was my agent, calling from New York. We had an offer!
Champagne toasts, hugs and kisses, well wishes — it was all wonderful. But it still felt like a dream. So far away. But now it’s reality. And as excited as I am — I am equally nervous.
For years, Catherine Grace’s world was mine, and mine alone, and not it’s time to share it with everyone else. I hope you love it as much as I do.
For now, I’ll just keep counting the days — 25 to be exact!
A First Book
It’s time to tell the truth. I was never that little girl who always dreamed of writing a book. Instead, this book found me.
Now, I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I figured that out in the third grade. But I wanted to write for newspapers and magazines and live some wonderfully glamorous, fast-paced life that surely belonged to the journalists. And, all grown up, I did write for newspapers and magazines, except there was no glamour and very little fast-paced living.
Then I found myself in Los Angeles, and sure as the sun sets over the Pacific, a writer in L.A. can’t help but think of writing a screenplay. Truthfully, I wasn’t brave enough to write a screenplay, so I wrote a treament, nothing more than a 10-page idea for a movie. But when I shared it with several friends in the industry, they all agreed, a book needed to be written instead.
I sat down at my desk and wrote one chapter, thinking surely at the end of the first chapter I’d know whether I was cut out for this life as a novelist or not. One chapter led to two, then three, and then there was no turning back.
Living so far from my native Tennessee, it was an unexpected gift to plunge into this world where Catherine Grace and Gloria Jean lived. I felt wonderfully connected with my characters and my childhood all at the same time. And when the book was finished, I was sad, surprisingly so. And I finally realized that I was desperately missing my friends in Ringgold, Georgia.
Before I ever signed with an agency, my friends were wonderfully encouraging, always reminding me that the process of writing was surely fulfilling in and of itself. At first I really didn’t couldn’t say that I agreed with that. I was used to having a byline and a paycheck and now there were no guarantees.
But by the time I was done, I realized they really did know what they were talking about. The process had become the great joy. Being published is certainly a tremendous thrill for any writer, but the joy is, and will always be, in the writing.