Thursday Noodles - Believarexic Edition

Unabashed celebrating and grifting on 3/28/24

Friends!

Every so often I check my book Believarexic on Goodreads (aka the Thunderdome of readers’ reviews) and guess what? I checked today and—

Believarexic reached 2000 ratings.

This is a completely, totally arbitrary achievement.

But I’m a big believer in celebrating *any* achievement — no matter how arbitrary.

Looka here:

Oh, my heart.

Believarexic is my little engine that could.

It didn’t get the awards or overseas attention my other two novels gathered.

But even after nine years in the wild, its sales and readership chug steadily along.

This is beyond gratifying. It’s downright humbling. Because I wrote Believarexic for two main reasons:

1. Unless you have an eating disorder (e.d.), you might not know that most e.d. novels, memoirs, or movies immediately become “how-to” manuals for disordered eating. This is true even —or, maybe, especially— if it is inadvertent or accidental. I promise you: every patient on the Eating Disorder Unit I was on in 1987 had read every e.d. book we could get our hands on. We had watched and rewatched every film and TV movie about e.d. ever made. We scoured them. We dogeared pages. We studied them to make us sicker. I didn’t want to contribute to that. I wanted the opposite. I wanted to write a true, real story that:

   1. FOCUSED ON HOPE AND RECOVERY — not on being sick — and

   2. did NOT include weight-loss tips, specific weights, clothes sizes, or other triggers / comparisons.

2. I made a promise to myself when I was 15. When I was 15, freshly admitted to the eating disorder unit, and I was standing there alone in a crappy, run-down shared bedroom that would be home for the next 10 weeks … somehow I knew would get through this. Don’t mistake me: I was scared shitless. But there was something deep inside of me that knew. I just knew, I could literally feel a me from another time — from the future, from when I was older, and healthy, and happy — I could feel her reaching back through time to hold my hand. To get me through this. Because it would be worth it. So I promised myself then and there, that when I was grown, and healthy, I would come back in time, and I would hold my own hand, and I would help myself through. Believarexic is that promise, realized.

And you know what? Readers with e.d. get what I was trying to do.

And it matters to them.

Feast your eyes on this note that arrived in my Instagram messages just this week:

shared with permission

I mean… wow.

Ratings are great, sales are lovely.

But these messages … oh, my heart.

Oooh yes, it is very tempting to compare ratings, sales, etc etc

but y’all today I’m not going to do it.

Not today, Satan.

2000 ratings. Woo hoo. Feels great.

Publishing is a real weird industry.

Being an author is a strange endeavor.

The goal posts? They are constantly moving.

Nothing’s ever enough.

What I’ve learned over the years, through some life-giving joys and a whole lot of heart-breaking disappointments, is:

• write your truth

• don’t even try to predict or understand “the market”

• surround yourself with genuinely good people

• COMPARISON IS THE THIEF OF JOY

I repeat: comparison is the thief of joy.

There will be no comparisons today.

There will only be cupcakes and wine.

Toot toot!

Why not hop aboard the Believarexic train today?

Even when a book is not new, its sales, ratings, and readership matter very much.

Want to hop aboard this little train that could?

Here’s how you can join the community of readers AND help folks find Believarexic — and do me a solid.

If you please:

• Buy Believarexic on Amazon - paperback, hardcover, or Kindle.

  • N.b.: Buying used books does not benefit authors. Authors receive zero money from used books.

• Review Believarexic on Amazon. Five stars, please, if you can swing it. This helps a ton. No one understands the algorithm. We just know it makes a difference when people start poking around for books that might help them.

• Buy Believarexic from your local independent bookstore. Indy bookstores are dearly important community gathering spaces. Asking your indy to order a book makes it more likely they will continue to shelve it and hand sell it. That is huge!

• Here in Durham, our indies include The Regulator Bookshop, Letters Bookshop, Golden Fig Books, and Rofhiwa Book Cafe. Wake Forest is home to the wonderful Page 158 Books. And Raleigh is home to the venerable Quail Ridge Books.

• Order Believarexic from bookshop.org. Bookshop.org is an online bookstore that supports local independent bookstores and is unapologetically anti-Amazon.

• Reviews and/or five-star ratings on Goodreads are also a tremendous gift. They feed the almighty algorithm. More cupcakes and wine when we reach 3000 reviews!

• Post about Believarexic on your social media. Tell your friends.

• Suggest Believarexic to your book club! I’ll even Zoom in if the timing works.

• Borrow a print version of Believarexic from your local library. Borrowing helps keep books in circulation. And public libraries are a gem.

• Borrow an ebook version of Believarexic from your local public library through Libby or through the Hoopla app.

Thank you all for sharing in my celebrations and good things this week!

Joy and love, they sure do multiply when shared.

A hearty toast of wine and cupcakes to you and yours.

Here’s to you. Cheers.

XOXO