Hi, All!
Ain't No Harm to Kill the Devil is still selling very well, and I've been doing quite a few book events related to it. Plus, I now know I'll be doing what I believe will be a really fun book tour in June. Basically, I'll be retracing, in a way, John Fairfield's footsteps. That is, I'll be doing book readings and events at many of the Underground Railroad depots/historic sites Fairfield used when he was helping slaves to their freedom. I can't wait! I'll be posting the full itinerary soon, and if you are going to be in any of the areas at that time, please stop by and attend one of the events. At each stop I'll be doing a special reading and "photo presentation" related to the story.
This past week I spent some time in New Orleans and wanted to jot a few words about that. The world of technology available to authors is simply incredible right now. It is still difficult for me to wrap my head around this, but I was actually able to do one book event in N.O. while seated on a bench at Jackson Square, right outside of St. Louis Cathedral (with the Mississippi River only a short distance behind me). The setting was incredibly beautiful -- and it was mid-80's and bright sunshine the whole time. The truly amazing part to me was being able to use "Face-Time" on my I-Phone to link up to readers over a thousand miles away -- and hold an hour discussion! Face-Time can now be linked to multiple computers, so authors can visit easily with audiences all over the country. In addition, no longer is there a lag where a person's lips move and the sound follows several seconds later on. At present, with the new applications, everything happens perfectly in "real time" for these sessions, which makes the experience positive for all. I'm going to attach to this message two pictures. The first is of the statue of Andrew Jackson, which is positioned right in the middle of Jackson Square and immediately in front of St. Louis Cathedral. For the book event, I was seated just before the statue. The second picture was taken over a thousand miles away from me by a few members of a group I was visiting with at the time about my book Inman's War (they were at Prairie). In the picture, my image can be seen on one of their laptops (this was taken while we were having a Q&A session). They could see me fine, and they looked like they were all right in front of me as we spoke! Yes, the new technology is really something. To think that this type of communication has become so simple and easy to use for authors and readers. Amazing!
One other quick note: I just finished the manuscript of another book. Details will follow in the next post. In the meantime, enjoy the spring weather -- and happy reading!
