Nothing Stays the Same But Change!

Yes, I admit it.

I've been AWOL.

In case anyone's been wondering why, well, hold onto your hats. A few days after I returned from ICRS, I received a phone call from Brad Waggoner, the new president of B&H Publishing Group. I'm always happy to talk with Brad. He has such a heart for God and a passion for making B&H a real force in the publishing world. The phone call wasn't very long, but it turned my world upside down.

In short, the realities of our beleaguered economy had finally hit B&H, and there had to be layoffs. My boss was among those who would be leaving. In addition, his boss, the publisher, was retiring. Now that's enough to shake things up for me, but the big news was yet to come.

I've been promoted. To Executive Editor over B&H fiction.

Now, this is a job I've done before, at Multnomah and at Zondervan. But it's a job that entails a WHOLE lot more than focusing on acquisitions, which I've been doing for the last year and a half. Most especially, it means I need to understand the workings of my company better, and get to know the folks on my team a whole lot better. So how do I do that from a couple thousand miles away (no, thank heaven, they aren't asking me to move!)? I travel to N'ville more. Every couple of months, to be exact.

So back on a plane I went, winging my way east for with a week-long visit to the Nashville offices, complete with back-to-back meetings every day. Now all I have to do is transfer my copious notes to the computer, organize and prioritize them, then act on 'em.

Yeah. No problem.

Thankfully, the PTB (powers that be) agreed to let me bring someone in to work with me on getting my woefully unorgainzed office organized so I don't lose details--or my desk--in the morass. What? You think I'm kidding?

SO not kidding.
After all, I just finished (or so I thought) my heavy travel schedule for the year,
so it's been get home, unpack what I don't need and add it to the pile,
pack what I do need, and back on a plane!
Now it's time to sort through it all. This picture is mid-organization mode.

In between sorting piles and files and figuring out WHAT DO I DO WITH ALL MY BOOKS???, I've also been coming up to speed on the balls (no pun intended) I need to keep in the air. All of which has left me excited and full of anticipation--but far too weary to do much more in the evenings (which is usually when I write my blog posts) to do anything but crawl into bed.

So, there you have it. The reason I've been offline. But I'm back now! {insert wild applause here, please.} Stay tuned for all the wild and wonderful things happening with B&H Fiction. And, of course, yours truly--who my new boss, Brad Waggoner, has dubbed WWW (Wild Woman of the West).

Just met me and the man already knows me so well.

ICRS Thoughts

As promised, here are my thoughts about the International Christian Retail Show (ICRS). As many of you know, ICRS is a trade show in which publishers and music and gift companies present their products to retailers. The show started out as a way to bring all the retailers together and place the majority of orders for the year. Last few years, though, there have been fewer and fewer orders placed at the show, which makes it less effective--or profitable--for publishers to attend.

In recent years, the show's grown to the point that it was one of the largest trade shows in the country. That being the case, locations for the show were limited to those with convention centers large enough to accomodate all the exhibitors: Denver, CO; Anaheim, CA; Atlanta, GA; and this year's location, Orlando, FL. Now, looking at those locations you might think, "How cool! You can combine it with vacation." Yeah, well, not so much. Because the show is held in July. And if there's anything you can count on, it's that Atlanta, Orlando, and Anaheim will be HOT in July. Denver's not so terrible. I like going to Denver. But Orlando this year? Torture.

Happily, the Orlando convention center is a beautiful building. And they have these beautiful sculptures of the Florida panther to greet you as you enter the building.



Inside it's spacious and beautifully decorated with trees and flowers, and lots of windows gives you the sense that you're outside (though the facts that you're not passing out from heat or suffocating from the humidity prove you're not).


Thankfully, we spent almost all of our time in air conditioning. The show was, as always, a blur. My then-boss, David Webb, and I spent Monday and Tuesday doing back-to-back half hour meetings with authors and agents. It was loads of fun, but exhausting. We did reserve time to walk the floor, and I was amazed at how different it was this year from last. For one thing, there were fewer exhibitors--most notably, Thomas Nelson wasn't there. And many of those exhibitors who came had far smaller booths.

There weren't near as many big books written by big names being touted, and the number of books signings were down. But at the B&H booth, we actually saw something exciting: we had LONG lines for our fiction authors' signings! Last year I had to go out amongst the crowds and draw people in. This year they were lined up and circling the booth before the signings started. Very encouraging. And it made for broad smiles on our authors' faces. Always nice to see that!

The most dramatic change, though, was how few retailers were there. Normally at ICRS, you have to fight your way through the press of people in the aisles.


This may seem a busy scene to you, but as compared to previous years, it's almost empty. Normally, you wouldn't be able to see the carpeting for all the people crowding the hallway. This year it was so quiet it was almost...peaceful. On one hand, that was nice. I'm not real big on crowds. On the other, it doesn't bode well for ICRS.

I know, I know, I'm the one who said ICRS wouldn't be going away. And I still don't think it will. Not right away. But what I saw--and more important didn't see--at the show this year tells me changes have to be made. By everyone. Because publishers can't keep spending the massive amount of money it takes to attend ICRS if the retailers aren't there to make the investment pay off. So what does the future hold? Good question. One for which I don't have an answer. But I am watching new developments with great interest. Developments such as the new Christian Book Expo coming up in 2009. I think it's going to be very effective, and I'm doing my best to talk B&H into taking part.

So overall, my impressions from this year's ICRS are that if attendance continues to fall, the future for this show may not be too rosy. So change is in the air, on many fronts. It'll be interesting to see how it all pans out, that's for sure. But I believe this: Christian publishing will go on, regardless. Because God is using it--and the authors and their wonderful books--to bring His truth to a weary world. So we'll see where it all goes in the next couple of years, but this much I believe: we're not going away.

Peace to you today.

Karen

Happy Birthday to Me!

It's my birthday. My 51st birthday, in fact. (I don't mind telling my age because I figure I earned every one of these years.) So, in honor of 51 years of life, love, learning, and--most especially LAUGHTER--here's a great video for you to watch. It's clean, it's imaginative, and totally hilarious.

Have fun!



Karen

Never Turn Novelists Loose on a Friday Night...

What do you get when you take around 80 published novelists, hand them digital cameras and a list of the novels they've all written, then set them loose on an unsuspecting hotel for a race to see who can come up with the most creative pictures for said titles?

Um...pandemonium comes to mind.

On Friday night at the ChiLibris retreat, we always have a fun night to get crazy. One year we did karaoke (you should hear Robert Elmer belt out "Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie..."), another year we went to a dinner theater where we got to take part in the play (after Randy Alcorn and I acted out our scene, in which he was a gangster and I was his moll, the real actors said they hated it when the amateurs were better than they were. ) This year, as I said above, we broke into 9 teams, were given a list of ChiLibris authors' titles, and had a race to see who could act out the most titles in an hour. Here are a few of the things my team came up with. Guess who they chose to act things out...especially the crazy or goofy stuff?



Team Members: Janet Benrey, Cara Putnam, and little Rebecca (with Nancy Moser and yours truly standing behind them). I gotta say, Cara was a heck of a trooper racing all over the hotel with Rebecca on her hip. And that sweet little baby girl was an absolute angel!
Book Title: Open Arms

Speaking of Rebecca, she was the perfect focus for the next book title: Eyes on the Prize:

Team members: Moi, Cara Putnam holding Rebecca, and Janet Benrey (apparently swearing the baby in for something...not sure what the raised hand was about, but hey, we were in a hurry...)
So on to the next one...

Team members: Janet Benrey being blessed oh so believably by Meredith Efken
Book title: Blue Heart Blessed by Susan Meissner

Team Members: Nancy Moser, Janet Benrey, and yours truly. The fella behind us is a poor guy we grabbed and begged to help us out. You'll know why in a second.
Book Title: Escape from Fred by Brad Whittington (Yup, the poor guy is playing Fred, from whom we're all escaping...)

Team member: Yeah, you guessed it. We grabbed the apples from behind the buffet glass, where they were a very pretty decoration. The ribbon...well...don't ask where we got that. Suffice to say I was glad to get it off my head.
Book title: A Big Apple Christmas (a Christmas compilation by various authors)

Team members: Nancy "Bruiser" Moser, Meredith "Baby Face" Efken, Janet "The Negotiator" Benrey, and Karen "Red" Ball. Yeah, we're sitting at a bar. No, we didn't drink! And our cigars are pens and straws. Hey, you work with what you got, you know?
Title: Wagered Heart (can you see those are hearts we're betting with?) by Robin Lee Hatcher

Team member: Yup, me again. Just love havin' little crocodiles nibblin' my ears.
Book Title: Whispers of the Bayou by Mindy Starns Clark

and last but not least...

Team member: the same one they always pick to be crazy. Wonder why that is...? Maybe because I was the only one brave (sounds so much better than stupid...) enough to not only open the fire extinguisher case but take the extinguisher out. The others were sure the alarm would go off if I opened the little glass door. I told them it wouldn't.
Thank heaven I was right.
Book title: Operation Firebrand by Jefferson Scott.

Of course, that's not all the titles we did. I think there were around 35 titles to do, and we got 27 or 28 of them. All the teams were racing around the hotel, jumping into position, snapping the picture, then taking off again. And we all dragged unsuspecting hotel guests into the frivolity. It's amazing, really, how willing people are to take part in something when they can tell the folks asking are having a blast. And believe me, we were! Sadly, our team didn't win, but that's okay.

We'll get 'em next year!

Karen

Face-to-Face with 4 a.m.!

I don't know about you, but there are very few things that will get me out of bed at 4 a.m. I can think of only a handful:

• My darlin' daddy needing to be taken to the ER. Amazing how wide awake I can be at 4 a.m. when that happens. Thankfully, it hasn't happened often.
• My puppy making those terrible hurking sounds that let you know your rug is about to be ruined.
• Fishing. I'll get up even earlier to go fishing. I love it. I knew I'd become a true fisher-woman the day I baited my hook with leeches and maggots. Yeah, I know, gross. But the fishies love 'em!.

• The call of nature. But only if it's screaming.
  

Yup, that's about it. Until yesterday, that is. That's when I discovered a whole new, fun reason to get up at the crack of dawn (rather than the crack of noon, as I far prefer...). What reason could that be? Well, check it out:

Seated from left to right:Tracy, Jenny, Nerolie, Lyn

Back: Rel, Angela, Nolene, Marg, Wendy and Sheryle

These lovely ladies, who live in Australia, have formed a book discussion group. You may know one of them: Rel Mollett. She has a marvelous blog, Relz Reviews, in which she keeps folks informed on Christian fiction and authors. I've known Rel through the internet for a number of years, since she wrote me after reading one of my novels. I've long been impressed with all she's doing to promote Christian fiction, so when she told me her group was reading my book, What Lies Within, (which a number of them are holding in the picture, bless their hearts!) I told her anytime they wanted to talk with me about it, I'd be there.

Be careful what you promise.

Now, I knew there was a time difference between Oregon and Australia . I mean, I'm not stupid. But I didn't realize just how LARGE a difference there was. So when Rel told me I'd need to be on the phone at 4:30 a.m. to talk with them, I only hesitated for a second. Well...okay, two seconds. But I was so excited at the prospect of talking with a room full of Aussies who'd read my book, it didn't take me long to get past the shock. Thankfully, Rel took to heart my advice to shoot me a number of reminders. With the short term memory issues I have thanks to Fibromyalgia, it's always a bit of a risk expecting me to remember something out of the norm. But with Rel's reminders--and PostIt notes all over my computer, bathroom mirror, and alarm clock--I was up and out of bed Friday morning at 4:10 a.m. (I only hit the snooze once. Aren't you proud?)

I made my way to my still dark office and waited. And sure enough, right at 4:30 a.m. Pacific, the phone rang, and there on the other end was Rel--and a chorus of greetings and laughter from the others. We talked for an hour, hitting on everything from why novelists use prologues to what an editor does to a bit of my own faith journey. And though I had to listen extra careful to be sure I understood what the ladies were saying (I loved their accents!), I had no trouble at all hearing the warmth, excitement, and joy permeating the women in that group. The hour passed as though it was a second, and when it was time to say good-bye, I told the ladies I wanted a picture. To remember them. To pray for them. And to show all of you.

So take a good look at those smiling faces. Though I only spent an hour on the phone with this wonderful group, I felt their love for each other and God. And, believe it or not, for me. So considering all I got from my time with them, getting up at 4 was not just okay, it was a real blessing.

Thanks, ladies, for a wonderful time together. May God bless each of you richly!

Peace--

Karen

ChiLibris Novelists' Retreat pix, at long last!

Okay, I promised I'd give you pix from the ChiLibris retreat, and here they be:


The wonderful Susan May Warren. She's almost as crazy as I am!

Mark Mynheir--a real sweetheart of a guy--and Kathy and Paul Herman

Terri Blackstock and Francine Rivers, getting tickled!

Look who got the color memo! The "Green Girls": Me, Neta Jackson, and Robin Lee Hatcher

Mugging for the camera: Angela Hunt, yours truly, and Francine Rivers

One of my all-time favorite authors and people:

Randy Alcorn

Creston Mapes watching Neta Jackson set her inner imp free

Terrific mystery writer (and my roomie), Gayle Roper

Speculative fiction author Sharon Hinck with Cara Putnam's baby girl, Rebecca. I got to sing Rebecca to sleep during one of the sessions when she got fussy. Cara has dubbed me the "baby whisperer." How cool is that? I wasn't sure she'd let me keep the name, though, when I told her how I did it: by stroking the same spot on Rebecca's face that I stroke to put my Siberian puppy to sleep!

So that gives you a peek into the great fellowship we got to enjoy. In my next entry, I'll give you a glimpse of what happens when we're turned loose on our hotel for a race to see who can be most creative in the least amount of time--so stay tuned.

Peace to you.

Karen