Book Tour

The Leaving Yesterday book launch tour gets underway this week! Woo hoo! I'll be making stops in Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia (complete schedule here). While I'm touring, I'll be doing my best to keep count, so I can add the total to my Books for Hope campaign (details below).
If you're in the area, stop by and say "hello".

Books For Hope

Want to make a difference in the world?
Looking for something new to read?

During the month of October, for every copy of Leaving Yesterday sold through my website or at any Borders store nationwide, $1 will be donated to Bridges of Hope. This is a wonderful organization which has impacted so many lives in South Africa. I encourage you to visit their website and learn more about their work.
FAQ
What do I need to do? If you purchase Leaving Yesterday through either of the above outlets, your purchase will be counted without any other action required.
What if I'd rather buy from my favorite bookstore? Great! Send me an email telling me when and where you bought the book and a $1 donation will be made for each book. This will not put you on any sort of mailing list!)
Why specifically Borders or your website? They are two of the easier places from which to get specific sales numbers. NOTE: If you buy through my website, it will connect you with CBD.com. You just need to go through my website first so I can count the sales numbers.

Leaving Yesterday Review

Leaving Yesterday officially launches on October 1. Right now, reviews are just starting to come in. This is definitely one of my favorites!
BTW- For all you techies out there, all three of my books are now available on Kindle. Woo hoo!

Looking for a bargain?

Doesn't everyone love a good bargain? Well, right now, CBD.com is selling my books at $7.99 each (cover price is $13.99). This includes pre-orders of the not-yet-released Leaving Yesterday. Not only that, but they're selling the complete 3 book set at $21.99. Early Christmas presents anyone? Here's the link, check it out!

A Beach Vacation for Under $15

My beachy writer pal, Julie Carobini, has a brand new book out. It's set in "Otter Bay", and by the time I finished reading it, I felt like I'd been on a beach vacation. Here's a little interview with Julie, to give you just a taste.

Hi Julie, it's great to see Sweet Waters hitting store shelves. As with your first two books, Chocolate Beach, and Truffles by the Sea, this book has a beach side setting. What about the ocean inspires you?

To me, the sea represents God’s infinite creativity. Just think about all the life that’s swimming around in those waters! Or how the sea stretches and lolls toward the horizon. I even like to jog the beach (when my bum knee cooperates).

The tagline on my website is “Faith, Flip Flops, and Waves of Grace.” That’s an intentional description of the types of stories that I write; stories that intertwine faith with my own God-given love of the sea and our constant need for grace.

What is your favorite part of being a writer? What's your least favorite?

I love the process of writing, of mulling ideas in my head during my shower and then letting my fingers fly across the keyboard while my hair is still wet. Those are the times when writing comes easiest.

However, it’s often in the re-writing or editing process when the degree of difficulty increases. Not a bad thing—but a necessary one!

What's a typical writing day for you?

With three kids, I prefer deadlines during the school year—although with Sweet Waters, that didn’t happen. I have a tough time pulling my mind away from the story, so the best writing days are when I can work without interruption (nearly impossible). So back to your question, after getting the kiddos off to school, I generally warm up my mind with a blog post, some Twittering and another cup of coffee. Then I write until I can no longer comfortably sit in my chair.

How is this book different from your other books?

My first books were fun-filled chick-lit romps with lots of asides. I laughed all through writing them.

With Sweet Waters, I enjoyed a bit of a transition. Humor exists within the pages, but it’s more understated than in the past. This story also contains a couple of ‘dark’ issues that I had to research to better understand, and while I can’t say that I ‘enjoyed’ learning about them, I did find them fascinating.

Tell us a little about the story in Sweet Waters.

Sweet Waters tells the story of sensible Tara Sweet, a woman hoping that moving back to the California coast her family left years before will lead to the fairytale she remembered. But Tara discovers fairy tales are fragile—and truth is often one ugly layer after another of secrets, accusation, rumor, and a past an entire church wants to forget. Enter Josh Adams, a rugged firefighter battling his own demons. Soon they find themselves at odds with their families, their faith, the townspeople of Otter Bay—and each other. Only in facing the lies from the past can they find the truth.

What's next for you?

The second of the Otter Bay Novels, A Shore Thing, will be released in June of 2010. The story centers around Callie Duflay and her fight to keep a huge development from destroying the central coast—while also protecting her heart from the charming architect on the proposed project. You can learn more about this and other stories on my website: http://www.juliecarobini.com/

Thanks so much for dropping by Julie!

You're welcome!

The rat is back!

Last week, I visited a book club--not just any book club--these were some women I met in 2008 while doing a mini book tour with Lauriane Snelling, Cathy Marie Hake, and Julie Carobini. These women are mostly a Bible study group, but in the summer they do a book club. They have a special mascot, a large plastic rat (she's sitting on my shoulder in the picture). They call themselves the Yahweh Sisterhood of the Traveling Rat. How fun is that?

They invited me to come hang with their group for brunch and a chat-- great food, awesome women, talking books. Few things in life are better than that!

Book News

Leaving Yesterday is going through final copy edits (thanks Natasha!) and will be hitting store shelves this fall. Here's the back cover copy:

A Powerful Drama of a Mother's Unfailing Love
Alisa Stewart feels like she's lost two sons: her eldest to a terrible tragedy and her youngest, Kurt, to a life ruined by addiction. But now Kurt has checked himself into rehab and found a healing faith that seems real. It's like he's been raised from the dead. But then a detective arrives at Alisa's door asking questions about a murder--the death of a drug dealer before Kurt entered rehab. Alisa fears losing her son again, and when she finds evidence linking him to the killing, she destroys it. Her boy is different now. He's changed and deserves a second chance. But when another man is charged with the crime, Alisa finds herself facing an impossible choice: be silent and keep her son or give up everything for the truth.

In other book news, Waiting for Daybreak is a finalist in the Women's Fiction category of the Inspirational Reader's Choice Contest. It's amazing how this happened just when I was needing some extra encouragement-- I'm so grateful for God's timing!

Fire

There is currently a massive fire in Santa Barbara. Just before midnight last night, the sheriff's department came through our neighborhood and told us the wind had shifted and we needed to get ready to leave. So far, we've been able to stay in our home, but we're in an evacuation warning area--and quite frankly it's hard to breathe. We're packed up and ready to go if needed. Please pray for the people in Santa Barbara, many homes have been lost and several firefighters injured.

"Secret" Tea

On Wednesday, May 6th, I'll be attending a "Best Kept Secrets" book tea. If you live in the Santa Barbara area, I'd love to see you there. (I'll be easy to recognize-- I'm the frumpy soccer mom of the group).

It should be a lot of fun, a great "girls day out" right before Mother's Day. Come along and bring a friend.

Wednesday, May 6th, 3pm

Cafe Shell, 1112 State Street

805-965-5742

The sun'll come out... tonight!

Tonight is opening night for "Annie". I'm especially excited to see the beautiful and magnificent sets, and to watch the graceful and flawless way in which the fly crews raises and lowers set pieces (one guess as to what my daughter does!). If you live in the Santa Barbara area, it will be happening all this weekend and next. Drop by and see the show!


Dos Pueblos Charger Theater presents:
ANNIE!

March 13, 14, 19, 21 @ 7pm
March 14, 15, 21 @ 2:30pm
March 20 @ 6pm

Dos Pueblos Performing Arts Center
7266 Alameda Ave. Goleta, CA 93117

$10.50 Students/Seniors
$12.50 General Admission


Buy tickets online at www.dphs.org

This is fun... and kind of weird

If you live in Holland, or happen to subscribe to a Dutch Christian magazine,then you just might run across this. To the left is an ad for A Promise to Remember and Waiting for Daybreak in their Dutch versions. It's kind of strange (but totally cool) to see my name mixed in with a bunch of letters that make absolutely no sense to me :-)

Hmm... I wonder if there are any typos?!?

An exciting day

I just received an email from Sarah Beth Grady. It seems that we now have the first official sighting of Waiting for Daybreak on a WalMart shelf. Woo hoo! The closest WalMart to me is about an hour away, so I'm glad to have friends who check these things for me!
In other good news, I received two copies of Een Beladen Belofte in the mail today. If I'm not mistaken, that is the Dutch way of saying A Promise to Remember! Very exciting, and kind of confusing, to see my name mixed in with a lot of letters that don't make any sense to me :-)

The glamorous life

I've been tripping the light fantastic lately. Here' s a sampling:
1) A ten year old with a (often quite high) fever for five days
2) A doggie with a biopsy that looked quite sad, but ended up being non-cancerous
3) A pile of laundry which roughly equals the altitude of K2
4) Read Twilight in about 24 hours, only to discover there were two double-sided pages missing from my brand new book (they were in the really good places too).
As glamorous as it all is, I wouldn't trade my life for anyone's. I'm very blessed!

Ahhh.....

Yesterday I turned in the manuscript for my third book, Leaving Yesterday. So, technically, I guess you could say that yesterday, I left yesterday. Huh?!? Anyhow, I'm glad to be finished (at least until the edits come back), and my family is glad I'm finished because they'd really like for me to go to the grocery store and do some laundry.
I went to visit a book club a couple of weeks ago up in Paso Robles (a couple hours north of here). Fun women, great food, lots of laughter--I want a charter membership. I took my camera with me, then promptly forgot to take it out of my purse. I guess some things never change :-).
Well, I'm off to be domestic. Have a great day!

Checking In

Wow, I haven't blogged in a REALLY long time. What can I say? Life got in the way (and quite frankly, it still is :-) )
Here's a quick update of what's been going on:
I'm in the process of finishing Leaving Yesterday, which will be in stores this October.
Waiting for Daybreak has been picked up by Wal-Mart, and should be appearing on their shelves by the beginning of February.
Tomorrow, I'm driving a couple of hours north to spend some time with a book club that has read A Promise to Remember. This promises to be a lot of fun!
Well, there's the world's quickest blog update ever. I'm hoping to be back next week with some pictures (we'll see how that goes!)
Blessings!
katie