Overnight Success

December 26, 2007

Rick Riordan has a wonderful post from December 22 on his blog when he's asked about his overnight success.

If a tree falls in the woods and no one hears . . . well, the tree doesn’t exist until we notice it. Thinking about my own ‘overnight success,’ I remembered one of the first book signings I ever did, ten years ago, when Big Red Tequila first came out. I was invited to Waldenbooks in a shopping mall in Concord, California. They set up a table at the front of the store. They allotted two hours. I sat there in my coat and tie and watched people pass by, steering clear of me like I was an insurance salesman. I gave directions to Sears. I explained several times that I wasn’t an employee at the bookstore and I didn’t know where the self-help section was. I signed a napkin for a couple of teenaged boys who thought the title “Big Red Tequila” sounded slightly naughty because it had to do with alcohol. I sold no books.

I take some comfort in his piece, actually. I don't believe in overnight success. And I like Rick's work a lot, both his work for adults and his work for kids. I'm also grateful for a terrific blurb he wrote for my novel DIRTY DEEDS. It's not like we'd met or anything, but I suggested to my then-editor that we should ask Rick and she did and he read the book and blurbed it.

I think there's some irony, too, if you notice today's post on Rick's blog about 39 Clues, which he's writing and drafting a series for Scholastic, which the NYT is touting (probably ridiculously, as Rick notes) as the "next Harry Potter."

I would just note that for all of Rick's comments about his relative lack of "having made it," his early P.I. novels won damn near every mystery award available. He's a uniquely gifted writer and I delight in whatever his newest books are, for adults or kids.

And I take heart that I don't know what the hell overnight success is either.

Cheers,

Mark Terry