During a conversation with fellow author Ainslie Paton (check out her big fat multi-layered books full of phenomenal awesome!) regarding our recent publications, sales and royalties, I got to wondering. About what I rather have: commercial success, critical acclaim, or a cult following. 
In some way, I really I like the cult following idea. The word cult comes from the latin ‘cultus’ meaning worship. In my cult the worship bit would lead to someone occasionally buying me coffee and baking me cookies. There is no religious, political, or aliens-are-coming-for-us doomsday slant to the type of Cult Following I mean. I’m talking fandom, that small but passionate fan base who buy my work.
Sure, commercial success would be nice because I like to travel and stay in luxury hotels, which is pretty expensive, and I’d SO fly business class on those long-haul flights I take when going to see family in Sicily and the USA, which is also pretty expensive. Commercial success would allow me that specific travel comfort.
As for Critical Acclaim? Critical acclaim is awesome because, well, it shows someone read you and liked your work. I am on board with that kind of ‘like.’
But let’s go back to the whole ‘Cult Following’ thing. I dig Cult Status because it makes me think of Pumpkin Spice flavouring and directors like the Coen Brothers and their movies Raising Arizona, O Brother Where Art 
Thou, Fargo, A Serious Man, and Millers Crossing (astute readers may pick up on my adoration of Miller’s Crossing in For Your Eyes Only) because the Coen boys do sharp, quirky and smart ass, and as you may know, I’m ALL about the smart ass.
Now I wanna be like Pumpkin Spice, which isn’t available Down Under, but my books are.
If you call my books fat I will immediately think trope and have to write them thin or something just to demonstrate their innate worthiness – you know despite their curves.
Quit that. Your books kick some ass.
In my scholarly crap, I use ‘trope’ to refer to the discuss the stable characteristics found in criticism of the romance genre and in the genre itself, that is,the expected things that make romance romance, e.g the meeting, separation, HEA, as opposed to plot devices/conventions (which are also tropes) like the ‘secret baby, marriage of convenience, ugly fat duckling to skinny swan. I hate the word ‘trope’ almost as much a ‘formula,’ but both are better than cliché.