Greetings All: We’re packing, heading to Billings to catch a flight to Detroit, to pick up a rental and drive to Jackson, Michigan. Our good friends and supporters at News Group have taken a large order of COMING OF THE STORM in paperback. First thing Monday, August 23, we’re going to be signing every one and placing an autograph copy sticker on the cover. If you live in the upper Midwest keep your eyes peeled when you head to the grocery store, airport, or drug store. We love warehouse signings! Each time we do one the distributors are able to disperse thousands of copies of our books into hundreds of retail outlets. But it’s brutal work. If you don’t believe it, try signing your name over and over five thousand times. Worse, you’ve got to do it as quickly as you can open a book, sign, close it, sticker it, and grab the next one. Our record on one of these mass signings is 9,881 books in 14 hours. That was with help from Levy Home Entertainment employees doing the picking, opening, stickering, and repacking. We ached for days afterwards. Okay, so why do we do it? Because in Michael’s case, he was 21 before he met a real, live author. Thank you Gaydell Collier. You were instrumental in changing his life. But getting back to the point, Michael would have cut his right arm off to have had a signed book by an honest-to-God author. Kathleen feels the same way, though she grew up in a writing family. With a signature, we are able to give a book a different quality–a personalized touch on that particular copy on that nameless and faceless book rack. You see, authors are mostly faceless, just names on a cover. A signed book gives us the opportunity to reach out to the reader. A way of saying, “Here, we poured our hearts and souls into this in an effort to provide you with the best read we can.” So, if you live in Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, or Pennsylvania, or are flying through O’Hare, Detroit, or Columbus, check the racks. It’s the best way we can personally reach out and offer you a good read. For the rest of you, be aware that COMING OF THE STORM, the first story of Black Shell and Pearl Hand, will be on a book ack near you by September 1, 2010. We know that many of you wait for the paperback, and yeah, we’ve started to get questions as to when COMING OF THE STORM will be available. It’s here, guys. Black Shell asked me to forward his best wishes. He hopes you enjoy COMING OF THE STROM, and to let you know that he, Pearl Hand, and the dogs will be back in FIRE THE SKY February 2011 in hardback.