A Day In Boston

Happy Thursday.

I had a nice break day today, running about the various shopping malls all connected to the hotel, having lunch with the marketing director of Zondervan—and later in the day, working on Coral Moon.

And yes, I watched to see who got kicked off American Idol.

Today it’s up and out of here to sign copies of Web of Lies at the convention. Tomorrow I’ll tell y’all about the sights and sounds there. I will have about an hour and a half to walk the floor before having to leave to catch my plane.

A little more about my presentation of Violet Dawn on Tuesday at Zondervan. I began by having the lights turned off and placing each listener in the scene that occurs in the first chapter of Violet Dawn. I lead them through this scene, using a few photos and graphics through Powerpoint. The end of that first chapter is—well, those of you who have a copy of Web of Lies have probably read the chapter in the back of that book. Let’s just say it carries a certain message—which, of course, I told my listeners:

Don’t go in the hot tub!

At that point I passed out custom candy bars I’d ordered. Hersheys milk chocolate bars with custom wrappers—the cover of Violet Dawn on the top, and on the back, my Seatbelt Suspense logo and those warning words: Don’t go in the hot tub!

Remember what Jaws did for keeping people out of the ocean? I am now on a mission to take your hot tubs away from you. (Insert evil laugh here.)

I then talked about the Kanner Lake series, its setting, various characters in Violet Dawn, and the main premise of this first book in the series. Then on to my suspense novels in general, and what my readers expect when they pick up one of my books.

Zondervan puts out three catalogues a year, which in turn means they have three sales rep meetings like this per year. This catalogue is for books published in Sept., Oct., Nov., and Dec., representing around 80-90 new products. These include Inspirio gift books, kids' books, nonfiction, fiction--both adult and YA, Nooma videos and Bibles. No way can all these books be presented at the conference--there just isn't enough time. The books that are covered are usually presented by someone in the marketing or perhaps editorial department in fairly quick succession. Then there are a few books which are specially presented by the authors. For this catalogue there were three—Violet Dawn, the upcoming release by Phillip Yancey (Prayer, Does it Make Any Difference?), and the project I mentioned yesterday that I can’t yet tell you about. So as you can see, this opportunity, indeed, was a wonderful privilege for me, and I have been very grateful for it.

However, for tomorrow I must change my mind gears—from hot tubs to spiders…