tired
acelightning asks..."The Price family's history suggests that there might be some sort of "paranormal" ability that helps a person detect cryptids, and that this ability is at least partially genetic. On the other pseudopod, it could all be nothing more than empirical knowledge, handed down from one generation to the next with a bit more intensity than Great-Grandmother's kugelhupf recipe."
I'm sort of cheating with this one, because it's not really a question. At the same time, a lot of the questions I've received have been very narrow ("What's Istas's favorite kind of pie?"), and hence qualify as both a) spoilers and b) not very interesting to take apart in detail. So please, submit more questions, and I'll take a moment to ramble about the Price family. For funsies.
There is no paranormal ability that allows people to detect cryptids. Well, that's maybe not entirely true: Sarah, who is a telepath, can probably find other cryptids by reading their minds, and Artie, who is an empath, can point out people who are unduly nervous or unhappy, and Istas can smell the difference between many species (but does not consider having a bloodhound-level sense of smell to be a "paranormal ability," as she was born that way). But for the most part, it's observation, education, and knowing what to look for. The Prices are raised on a steady diet of "And how do we spot a bogeyman?" They take field trips to the local gorgon and harpy communities. They learn early how to spot the "probably not a human" signs, and also how to trick people into identifying their species, even if they can't quite tell what it is. It's science. Behavioral science, field biology, and deduction.
There's also an element of luck, which is where the rumors come in, at least in certain circles. "Healy luck: sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, but it's always interesting" used to be a fairly common saying within the family. No one knows for sure what kind of stock Fran came from, and it's possible that she has jink or leprechaun in her family tree, somewhere. Ditto for the Davies family, which joined the Covenant in the 1700s, a period when many "close enough to pass" cryptids made a bid at hiding in plain sight by signing up with their dearest enemy. So it's entirely possible that luck-manipulator genes have entered the family tree at one or more points. (Whether this has actually happened is something that I'm not saying.) But this is only luck: even if it's a factor, all it's going to do is put people who have it in the path of more cryptids, giving them more opportunities to exercise the deductive skills listed above.
Field biology is a matter of knowing what to look for, knowing where to look, and not giving up. The Prices have these qualities in spades.
February 27 2013, 18:14:46 UTC 4 years ago
AlexSeanan?" ;-)I really wasn't sure (and I kind of wanted the family to have some sort of enhanced ability to spot cryptids). But I also suspected that it might all be attributable to family lore, carefully taught to each generation - they certainly do "teach their children well"! And Luck is so hard to pin down...
February 28 2013, 15:41:41 UTC 4 years ago
February 27 2013, 18:15:15 UTC 4 years ago
If there is luck of some sort affecting things, it's probably a good thing that "Spot the Bogeyman" is a children's game in the Price family; without the deductive skills, it would probably give them more opportunities to be lunch.
February 28 2013, 15:41:54 UTC 4 years ago
February 27 2013, 20:48:35 UTC 4 years ago
February 28 2013, 15:42:03 UTC 4 years ago
February 27 2013, 22:40:57 UTC 4 years ago
Just wanted to say that my local bookstore (Arty Bee's in Wellington, NZ) have started stocking your books after I approached them. Woohoo! :-)
February 28 2013, 15:42:15 UTC 4 years ago
Also, yay!
February 27 2013, 23:53:40 UTC 4 years ago
February 28 2013, 01:29:32 UTC 4 years ago
February 28 2013, 20:49:28 UTC 4 years ago
February 28 2013, 21:02:37 UTC 4 years ago
1. All sales are sales. 100 copies is 100 copies. But!
2. Best-seller lists are based on sales during a specific period of time. Usually, the bulk of your sales will happen during the first week. If it takes 100 sales within a week to make the NYT list, and 20 copies "leak" before official publication, I may miss the list. And while I'm sure that sounds very "it's all about the marketing," at the end of the day, making the list is what makes my publishers buy my next book.
In addition...
3. I have OCD. Numbers are very important to me. "Your book is on the shelf before the numeric point where it was supposed to be there" makes me freak out in a way that is disproportionate, but honest.