Grabbing A Happy Dance
A few weeks ago I was sitting in a meeting and felt my cell phone vibrate on my hip, indicating a call. I glanced down at the ID, saw it was a friend of mine from Florida, and made a mental note to call her back as soon as the meeting was over. I should have known better. This particular friend wasn’t one for idle chatter, so when she called six more times in the next ten minutes, I knew something was up and excused myself from the meeting to return her call.
She answered after a half ring, and instead of offering her customary ‘Hey,’ she shouted, “Congratulations!”
I glanced at the phone to make sure I’d dialed the right number.
“Girl, I’m so happy for you!”
“Umm . . . thanks?”
I heard her breath catch. “Oh my God, you mean you don’t know?”
All I knew was a group of people were waiting for me, impatiently I might add, in the boardroom across the hall.
“You hit their list, girl! You hit the list!”
“What are you talking about? Who’s they? What list?”
“The bestsellers list!”
My heart flip-flopped in my chest. “What?” There was no way Water Witch had hit any major list without me knowing. My publisher would have been on the phone in a nanosecond, blasting the news.
“The bestsellers list!” she shouted again. “I swear to God! I’m standing right in front of a sign that says; Number 8 Bestseller- Water Witch – Deborah LeBlanc.”
“Where are you, the Family Dollar Store?”
A loud tsk. “As if! I’m at Publix.”
“You mean the supermarket Publix?”
“Yeah! Hey, I’ll take a picture of it with my camera phone and send it to you.”
And she did.
Of course I was happy to see Water Witch sitting on any bestseller list, but the odd thing is, no one seems to know how it got there. My publisher didn’t know and neither did my agent. When both contacted Publix’s corporate office to find out how their bestseller status was determined, (i.e. how many copies have to be sold before it hits that list) all they said was, “We can’t release that information. It’s proprietary.”
Well, crap!
Oh, well . . . proprietary information or not, being on that list still made me do the happy dance. And isn’t that what life’s about? Grabbing all the happy dances when and while we can.
