Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Success at the CAPE Home school Convention

Hello everyone! I thought I had better drop in and do an update. First of all, thank you so much to everyone who prayed that my book would get here in time. Praise the Lord, it actually arrived several weeks before convention. So happy about that. :-) The Lord just continues to amaze me as He orchestrates everything with  this book publishing process (from the very beginning all the way to getting my book out to different retailers.)

Just last week I was blessed to be part of the exhibitors at the New Mexico Home School convention. My friend, Alicia, and I shared a table. We cleverly called it, "Homeschool Authors"... actually, I think she is the one that came up with that title.. :-) In any case, it was quite brilliant and made for some neat conversations with homeschooling parents.

Alicia was selling her book, "To Birmingham Castle". If you haven't seen the interview I did with Alicia, you can check it out here. The book that she published was written very well and had tons of historical facts and adventure. She researched for about 5 years before publishing so that she made sure she was as accurate as possible. It definitely paid off! Alicia was able to sell out on the second day, which was fantastic! We were all pretty excited- yes, I say 'all' because we had several visitors and helpers who came frequently to our table.... but, hey, who could resist the free chocolate we were passing out?

We forgot to start out our first day 'right'. We had both said that we wanted to pray together for the Lord to bless our sales and let us just shine for Him. So, we forgot to that the first day. The second and third, however, we were able to have some time before we opened to seek the Lord. It is quite amazing how it can make your day go so much better when you start out right! :-) Not that we were too surprised or anything, but it was still nice to see and feel that change.

The Lord blessed me as well and I was able to sell out- at the last minute! I remember thinking, as the people in charge began calling through the vendor hall for vendors to start shutting down, "Well, Lord, thank you for letting me sell most of my books..." then it occurred to me that we hadn't officially closed and He could still sell my last three books.... and sure enough, He did. It was quite exciting. :-)

Needless to say, Alicia and I had a wonderful time at convention. We hope to do it again next year and we'll see how the Lord grows it.

In the meantime, here are a few pictures from the convention. They were taken by my friends Rachelle and Kelsey. Enjoy!





(The candy that was in that jar was the 'convention saver'... espresso candy! Literally kept us going... and all the mom loved it, too.... hmm..)






 (The pictures below were taken by Kelsey- Thank you for letting me use them!)



(This is a book that we were honored to also have at our table. The illustrator, Debbie, did an amazing job. It is simply Psalm 1 put to pictures to help children memorize their scripture. I thought it was fantastic! She has done the artwork for the Curious George show as well.)

Well, that is all I have! I will be returning soon with some other update posts. Also, you can now find links to purchase my book on the sidebar.