HOLY FUCKING SHIT, I’m a New York Times Bestseller.

So…

I was going to do a really cool post. I was going to be all casual and say “Hi, I’m a New York Times Bestseller, and you’re probably not. Anyway, here’s more reasons I hate Star Trek.”

And I’m sure it would’ve been my usual slice of dickishness with a little humour peeking through the cracks, and we’d all have chuckled, slapped each other on the backs and said “Oh, that Aaron, he’s quite a joker.”

That was my plan.

At this stage, I’m still not entirely convinced it’s for real. Let’s just say if there’s an error in the list and I get kicked off it, I won’t exactly have a heart attack. I’m half-expecting it to happen.

I found out last night (from Facebook, of all places). The problem was that my source was Christian Dunn, my publisher’s short fiction editor. Christian is – and I’m being fair, here – a meanie. This had all the hallmarks of a classic Dunnish Prank(tm), and rather than feel any joy over the deal, I vowed to stab him in the intestines instead. I decided to wait for the actual list to see if it was for real.

I woke up late this morning, because I’d been up until 5:30am trying to catch up on Blood Reaver and my Age of Darkness short story, which are both (surprise!) almost ludicrously late.  I did the first thing that I do everyday. I checked my email.

And man, I had a lot of email.

Seriously. Loads.

I usually wake up to a fair bunch of stuff (editors writing in CAPITAL LETTERS about missed deadlines; private messages from various forums, etc.), but this was insane. I clicked a few of the ones from various folks at my publisher.

But the things they were saying didn’t make sense to me. Madness. These were my colleagues, indeed, my friends. Rik Cooper, Mark Newton, Chris Wraight… I trusted them, yet they had embarked on this strange course of action, deciding to make no sense at all.

I started reading Facebook comments, and emails from other people. These were equally mystifying.

At this moment in time, I was listening to ‘Save it for Later’, by The Beat. I like that song.

Still confused, I took my glasses off.

This didn’t help at all, because I needed them to see the screen. Without them, I had to move closer.

Gripped by a sudden desire to stop pulling confused faces, I decided to check myself. On my quest, I found this:

Wait, I thought. I know that guy.

(Shouldn’t that be ‘Black Library’? Not ‘Games Workshop’? I didn’t know it went out like that. Whatever.)

Of course, since all novelists only ever write for money rather than the pleasure of creation, my mind immediately turned to the financial benefits. The cash! The clout! The… raw… power…

Why, I could even introduce myself like this: “Hi, I’m New York Times Bestselling Author Aaron Dembski-Bowden”, and it would actually be true. I mean, it would be really, really dickish, but it wouldn’t actually be a lie.

But then I remembered how I won’t see the royalties for ages.

So.

Making the NYT Bestseller List has been one of my ambitions ever since I realised I was too stupid to be a paramedic.

Instead of doing something fuelled by hate, despite that’s what everyone always wants to see from me (and what comes naturally when discussing Star Trek), I’m just going to say Thanks. A sincere thanks to everyone who bought and dug The First Heretic.

10 months of my life went into that novel. The reviews and forum feedback have been incredible, overwhelming, and a host of other words that all really just mean “killer” and “rad”.

So I shall use this space to say something terminally lame instead. And that is this:

“Hey, Mum and Dad! Look at me!”