After a long and very winding road my parents are back home in Canada. I’ve thanked them personally for all their love and support, but I’d like to do it publicly as well. They truly went above and beyond by visiting over 40 book stores on their way home, talking with sales staff, community relations managers and store managers, and all to hand out an ARC of a book written by their son. The final leg of the journey saw them visit two Barnes & Nobles in Lansing and E. Lansing (thanks Sara,) Michigan, and three Borders stores in Ann Arbor (thanks to General Manager Susan at Borders Express, and at the two Borders stores Audie and Kevin, the Ops Manager.) After a short rest while they unload the trailer and get things squared away they’re going to pop into some stores in Canada as well. Wherever they went they were received with genuine interest and appreciation which suggests that book stores are open and willing to work with authors and publishers at the grass roots level. So I’d also like to send a global thanks to all the people that accepted an ARC of A Darkness Forged in Fire from my parents on my behalf. And for all those stores my parents weren’t able to visit I’m happy to say that Pocket Books has mailed out a very robust number of additional ARCs across the country. By the way, a big thanks to the publicity and marketing staff at Pocket, especially Kerrie Loyd, Melissa Gramstad and Jean Anne Rose (and no doubt others I have yet to meet,) they have been on the ball from the start and met or exceeded any expectation I’ve had, and I dream big 🙂 And while I’m at it, a special thanks too, to Subrights Director Lisa Keim who continues to surprise with new sales, publicist Nicole Meistch in Canada and my editor in the UK, Sally Partington. It’s a thrill to be part of such an exceptional team.

While touring the stores my father also made a point of checking out the history section to see how many of my titles from Stackpole Books were there. Many stores had thirty or more from my Stackpole Military History Series which was very gratifying to learn. Some stores had even gone so far as to group the titles together which I’m told looks very impressive on the shelves (and, to be honest, was how the series was designed.) My hope is that we’ll get more stores to shelve them this way.

Oh, and I don’t want to forget to thank my web page designer Tessa Sweigert. I wanted something straightforward, easy to use yet still visually interesting and Tessa has come through brilliantly with her design. More features are going to be added so stay tuned.

You dream of this day and wonder if it will ever come 🙂 An ARC of my book has shown up on ebay. I’m a little overcome. Ok, so it’s being sold with another book, but I’m not the least bit insulted…really…not at all.

As the ARC-RV tour winds down my folks popped in to two B&Ns in Michigan. They met Bill in Kalamazoo (sounds like a song from the 50s) and Tom in Battle Creek. They’ve actually made it all the way back to Canada, but I’m still getting information on their last stops.

I just finished going through second pages and found just a few tiny tweaks. The cover is final, so too the flap copy, so everything is just about ready to go to press.

I am thrilled to announce that A Darkness Forged in Fire has been picked up by the Science Fiction Book Club and will be featured as the (or is it an) alternate selection for August 2008. For a rookie first time author I am really excited by this. I bumped into Pocket’s subrights director in London while visiting the S&S UK offices when she told me the great news, but was sworn to secrecy until now. You can’t see it, but I’m grinning and doing a little jig while typing this, which is making it a bit hard to type!

Cheers,

Chris

For the last several days my parents have been camped out in Indiana looking at new trailers. After much debate they have purchased a new one. I jokingly suggested they get huge panels put on the side with my book cover and my dad thought it was a great idea. My mom, not so much.

I completed my first interview last night. When it shows up on the web I’ll note the website. The questions were indepth and definitely required some thought.

More ComicCon – While at the show I also bumped into a lot of folks from Del Rey where I first started out, including my first boss, Steve Saffel, Kathleen O’Shea (who happens to be married to author Peter David) as well as being a master puppet-maker, her daughter Ariel (did I spell that right?), Betsy Mitchell, Keith Clayton, Chris Schluep and Bill Takes. I also reconnected with Caron Harris in production. Over at Pocket there was Anthony Ziccardi, Dep Publisher, Ed Schlesinger, my editor, Melissa Gramstad, my publicist, Marco Palmieri, another editor, and other folks that sadly I have forgotten their names at the moment! I’m probably forgetting even more. All in all Comic Con was a terrific experience. At the moment I don’t think I’m going to the one in San Diego, but that could change. I will be at BEA in LA the end of May, although I don’t know if I’ll be doing a signing or what. My primary purpose out there is to represent Stackpole Books in my editorial capacity.