USA TODAY!!

Okay, I can't wait any longer. I had a nice little blog started on the book signing party my pal Debbie is throwing for me tonight, but I'm starting over. On a lark I went to the USA Today best seller site last night to see if the Earl by chance had made an appearance and--mirabile dictu!!--there he was. My jaw dropped. I asked Kristina to check, and she confirmed my eyes weren't deceiving me. As I write this, you have to click on "This week's printable list" in the upper right to see the list for the week ending April 15. The Earl is at #126. Yee haw!!

I am definitely jazzed. This means someone--many someones--are buying the Earl. (And, hopefully, reading and enjoying it.) But then I was trying to remember back to when I was "just a reader" before I got into the publishing biz. Here's a question for the assembled multitude in cyberland--do readers notice USA Today or New York Times bestselling author on book covers? And do those few words entice you to give a book a try?