July 7th, 2010

Well … the International Christian Retail Show (ICRS) has come and gone from my adopted hometown of St. Louis.

The amazing thing is that, thanks to Douglas Bond and P&R Publishing, I was able to step onto the floor of the convention, even if briefly.

Once I heard that ICRS was coming to St. Louis, I had dreamed of going and meeting a publisher, but knew it was next to impossible since I was unpublished.

You see, in order to go you have to be either a Christian retailer, a publisher, an invited published author, a supplier, part of the media, or an agent.

For me that meant: impossible.

So I had given up hope of attending, and instead considered paying to be at the Christy Awards banquet.

But excellent historical author Douglas Bond contacted me to see if I could setup some book signings for him while he was in town for the show. Doug and I had met at last year’s Reformation Day Faire up in Peoria, IL, and he is a fellow P&R author with LB Graham.

And so I did, and by no effort of my own (honestly, I had tried this in January and had fallen on my face!), God setup two signings, and even provided Doug a telephone radio interview scheduled sometime in July!

And to say thanks, Doug got Ian Thompson, the VP of Marketing at P&R Publishing, to invite me out to dinner last Tuesday night. And Doug got me briefly onto the ICRS convention floor before we headed out, and so all I can do is marvel at God working on Doug’s behalf—as well as my own.

So Doug and Ian … thanks! It was an amazing answer to prayer for me, and I look forward to submitting Merlin’s Blade to P&R sometime in the upcoming months.

More on that in Big News #2 …