One of the fun things about store visits, was that I spotted many of my friends. T.L. Higley was everywhere – several copies deep with her new book. Katie Cushman was on some key front tables, as was Robin Parrish. Sherri Sand had shelf space with her debut novel at almost every store. Donita K. Paul had long rows of all her dragon books, and Susan May Warren was prominently featured in most of the stores—often on the end of the row. Those are just a few of the examples that had me smiling.

After hours of traffic around Chicago, we stopped in Elgin for one of our last two store visits.

The manager, Kerrie Vujnovich, of the Family Christian in Elgin greeted us with a huge grin and thanked me for coming in. She shared her enthusiasm for the new store’s growth, in spite of challenges of the economy or competing stores. She described herself as an avid reader, and was delighted to get signed book-plates and bookmarks from me. She said there are some fiction readers on her staff who would be thrilled. I felt very blessed to be wrapping up my store visits with this extra-positive experience. Please stop in and visit her!

With one last bag of goodies to deliver, we stopped in at an independent bookstore in Janesville, WI, called BookWorld. A cozy seating area is surrounded by loads of shelves with an eclectic mix of genres. I found quite a bit of Christian fiction (Jan Karon, Bev Lewis, Jerry Jenkins) intermingled with all the other fiction. It was fun to see these voices side-by-side with various NYTime bestsellers. The young clerk told me how much she loves working among books. We both agreed that books are like friends—and spending time in a bookstore is a dream job.

Feeling like I’d done all I could to let a few more retailers know about my books, and happy that I’d offered a bit of gratitude and encouragement for all their efforts, Ted and I headed to KFC for a well-earned supper.

The next day we did a little hiking in Wisconsin. I’ll share some photos from our downtime next.

Blessings!
Sharon

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