Posted on December 25th, 2025

Today I did what I’ve done more times than I care to admit over the past two weeks: I checked the Amazon listing for my debut novel The Family. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. It’s habit, curiosity. Sometimes I just like to make sure it’s still there. And then I saw the badge.

#1 New Release in Conspiracy Thrillers.
#3 Overall in the category.

My first reaction wasn’t excitement. It was suspicion.

I spent a long time in tech, and one thing that career teaches you is that data lies all the time. Not maliciously, just casually, without apology. So I refreshed the page. Then I opened a different browser. And a third. Still there. It wasn’t until I navigated to the actual Best Sellers list for the category itself and saw The Family sitting there that it finally registered as real.

There was a flicker of excitement, sure, but it was overtaken by something quieter and more grounded: appreciation. Gratitude. The realization that something I made—something that lived in my head for almost thirty years—had landed with enough people to move a needle, to give the book a small moment in the sun. That alone felt enormous. It exceeded every expectation I had when I started writing it.

What stopped me cold was the company. The surrounding authors on that list are masters of the craft. Writers whose books I’ve read, whose careers I respect, whose names are larger than life. Seeing my own sitting on the same page was surreal in a way I’m still having trouble articulating. For a bit, I was standing next to writers I’d admired for years, and there was this strange, fleeting thought I couldn’t shake. What if one of them was looking at this list too? What if, for a second, Glen Cooper, Peter Kirkland, Dean Koontz, or any of the writers on this list saw my name sitting there and thought: Who’s that guy at number three? Maybe they clicked. Maybe they didn’t. Almost certainly they didn’t. But the fact that it could have happened—that the distance between “admirer” and “peer” momentarily collapsed—felt privately monumental.

More than anything, it made me grateful. Grateful to readers who took a chance on an unorthodox debut. Grateful for being at a stage of life where I get to do this work at all. The ranking itself will fade—probably by the time you read this—but what stays with me is the feeling underneath it. The sense that I’m fortunate to be able to sit down and make something out of nothing. To build worlds, populate them with characters, and send them out into the wild hoping someone might enjoy spending time there. That’s the real gift. Everything else is just a screenshot, much like the one at the top of this post.

One detail I can’t leave out: this happened on Christmas Eve. A night already tuned for reflection, for taking stock of things you rarely slow down enough to notice. I found myself counting blessings instead of metrics. Past me, who started stories but seldom finished them. Present me, sitting on my sofa, refreshing a browser like it all might vanish if I blinked. Future me, hopefully still doing this, still appreciative, still a little stunned.

For a silent moment on a Wednesday evening, it felt like more than enough.

Thanks for reading.