ANNOUNCEMENT - national release of my young adult book, Summer in Paris, from Valor Books

It's a thrill for me to announce the national release of my young adult book Summer in Paris from Valor Publishing. The official release date is March 16th, 2010 and I will be posting all the wonderful details of the launch party. Visit the web-site for Valor Publishing http://www.valorpublishinggroup.com/and you can find out about all the great books they are releasing this spring. I am posting a countdown to the release and you will find on the side bar of my blog, a list of all the blogs participating in my blog tour.

As part of this exciting venture I spent two days last week with the Valor team of experts and other authors in an extensive and inspiring training. Even after eleven years and nineteen books, I learned a ton of great information and came away feeling so pumped up I thought I would explode!

One of the most memorable moments though was a trip we took to Alexanders Printing where we took a tour of the facility. Valor uses Alexanders to print the ARCs for our books (Advanced Reader Copies) which are sent out to reviewers and other lucky folk who get a sneak peek at the books.

Ryan Young, at Alexanders, was nice enough to give us a tour of the facility. Only authors and other book people would get so excited about seeing big printing machines and the smell of ink and paper. I'm serious, it was intoxicating. Think kids in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory and you get the picture. It was fascinating to learn the process a book goes through from the moment they receive the digital text to when it becomes a bound book in one's hands. Like watching the birth of baby. (Again, only an author would really get this)

While we were standing near the machine which puts the covers on the books, someone in our group said, "Hey, look at that." We all looked where they were pointing and there, at the bottom of some random storage bin was a flat cover of my very first book, "An Unexpected Love" completly covered in dust and footprints. Had that one random cover been sitting there for eleven years? Ryan, our awesome guide said he didn't know the answer to that question, but I have to say, there was something significant to the fact that finding my very first book cover there while getting ready to release my first national book made it seem almost too perfect to be a coincidence.
Here's a picture of me and Ryan with the book cover. You can see the footprints in the margins.

I will post the cover as soon as I get it and I will also post more of the fun details pertaining to the book launch party and my national tour. Who knows, I may show up in a city near you. It would be incredible to meet some of you who live around the country.

You can preorder the book now! Click on the Valor link in the sidebar and order you copy today!