Book Signing at the Alma-Mater

On Friday, December 4, I had the opportunity to do a book signing at the college I graduated from: Bob Jones Univeristy. It was successful in as many ways as you could measure:

• 100 books sold in 2 hours
• got to see the faculty members who gave me my great education
• saw old and new friends
• spent time with my sister, who works down there.

The young lady in this picture is the daughter of my Youth Pastor from high school, Randy David.

Here's me and my Computer Science professor, Dan Wooster. He's a huge supporter of my work and has sure encouraged me over the last year.

In closing off this post, Glenn Young over at his excellent blog: Faith, Fiction, Friends included me in a list of books he describes as the "Best Books he Read in 2009."

Here's his Fiction List...spin over to his site and check out the other categories:

Fiction:
· Providence by Chris Coppernoll
· Dogwood by Chris Fabry
· Chasing Francis by Ian Cron
· Talking to the Dead by Bonnie Grove
· Lost Mission by Athol Dickson
· Return Policy by Michael Snyder
· The Shape of Mercy by Susan Meissner
· Summer of Light by Dale Cramer
· Wayback by Sam Batterman

Blessings,

Sam

The Alien Relic

Stephen King once referred to the first draft of any novel as an "alien relic." I couldn't agree more.

As I plow through the manuscript of my next novel, tentatively called Maximal Reserve, I am face to face with adverbs (words ending in -ly), broken and grammatically, mangled sentences, mismatched character names and redundant paragraphs that seem to indicate I was smoking an illegal substance at the time of the writing.

To make it worse, I have some early readers providing me thoughts and feedback. I need feedback! I need validation, but this process is exceptionally (look, another adverb!) humbling.

It's a good thing I have great friends!

I also see a lot of places where the plot needs to be tighter and more connected for the reader. This part reminds me of the medieval torture of being drawn and quartered. There is so much tension in the book and the chapters are so intricate in feeding information out as needed that I feel like the whole thing will fly apart.

One of my friends said that she found it interesting to see a book at this stage--fresh from the brain. That pretty much sums it up.

People may like sausage, but no one really wants to see how it's made.