As Emily Dickinson wrote, fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate.

The Kindle Scout campaign for my novel has now entered its second week.  Week One was fairly successful because during most of that time my book was highlighted in the “Hot and Trending” category.

I’ve never been hot and trending on the internet before.  In fact, I’ve never been hot and trending anywhere before.  Certainly not in fashion, to which my wife can readily attest.

So it was quite a strange feeling, this hotness and trendiness.  I admit to enjoying the sensation.  It put a new spring in my step, a grin on my face.

Now I know how the Kardashians feel.  Now I know why they work so damn hard each and every day to stay hot and trending.

But — and there’s always a ‘but’ — I found myself obsessing over staying hot and trending.  Every hour I would check on my computer or phone to make sure I was still hot, still trending.  I braced myself for the possibility that I would lose both.

Here are the stats for my campaign, as of Dec. 17th.

Hours in Hot and Trending: 157 out of 216 campaign hours

Number of Page Views: 602.

Origination of Page Views: 54% from Kindle Scout, 46% from other sites, mainly FaceBook.

There’s my book on the left, during its glory days.

These, of course, are not Kardashianesque numbers, but in the little universe of Kindle Scout, they’re apparently decent.  (No, I didn’t create a spreadsheet to calculate all that.  The Kindle Scout program provides this to authors in order to, “refine your outreach strategy.” )

But as you can see from the chart, the last two days have brought jolts of pain: I was off the list.  The book’s campaign no longer sizzled.  It had cooled to room temperature.

I was bereft.  The link for my novel’s campaign was now relegated to the bottom of the science fiction and fantasy category.  Nerdville.  The antithesis of both hot and trending.

I honestly don’t know one Kardashian from another, nor do I know what they’ve done to warrant attention, other than being consistently hot and trending.  I see links at the bottom of a lot of news sites promising details.  In fact, I was going to include a photo of a Kardashian in this post, in hopes of skimming off their hotness and trendiness.  But discretion is the better part of valor, so you’ll find no bikini-clad Kardashians on this site.

But at some point, I would imagine, the Kardashians will also no longer be hot and trending.   It may take years, decades. It may take an apocalypse.  But when it happens, I will be able to offer them solace, empathy, and a few good books to read.