Don't forget to stop by here tomorrow for a chance to win a book!  You will love meeting my good friend. 

First, a couple of photos of a summer school talk audience last Friday down in Ripley, Ohio.  Ripley is where the Rankin family had their station of the Underground Railroad.  My books Across the Wide River and The Light Across the River are about the Rankins and their Underground Railroad adventures.  I had to take two photos to get everyone in!  The tech guy in the green shirt is my PowerPoint guru husband.

Thanks for being great listeners, RULH kids!

Now to this morning.  We are briefly down one car, so I drove my daughter to her college summer class.  Yes, she looooved that.  :-)   The class is only an hour and fifteen minutes long, so I didn't have enough time to go home, and I'm not really a downtown kind of gal.  Luckily I knew of a bookstore nearby and I planned to browse happily--did I mention it's almost my birthday?  Birthday $$$ will be coming in.

Then came the big dilemma.  I write books.  Bookstore I planned to visit doesn't stock 'em yet.  Should I take copies of both books and talk to the manager?  I've done it before without success, even when my son worked at a bookstore cafe.  I was really draggy this morning, too, since for over an hour we had huddled in the basement for a tornado warning at 11:30 PM.  Not at my best, and it can be quite humbling to ask a general market bookstore to stock Christian fiction by a local author.

I decided to go for it.  I had a fleeting thought last night while the storm was raging (and was it a scary storm, with a huge wall cloud illuminated by almost constant lightning).  "I think there's a Borders near campus, too."  I confirmed that this morning and decided to go there with books in hand and pride at low mast.  I knew enough to say, "Hi, I was in the area and thought I'd drop by with a couple of my books for you.  Here's an e-release sheet from my publisher."  The manager flipped my book to the back cover.  "Christian fiction?  What's it about?" 

So there it was: another failure.  Doomed before I began.  But I plunged ahead.  "It's about a family who ran a station of the Underground Railroad in Ohio."  She looked interested.  I continued, "Have you ever heard of Rankin House in Ripley?"

Get ready!  She said, "Oh, yeah!  My mom was born in Ripley!  She lived on the hill.  She used to play on the steps when she was little.  Back in the 30's."

These steps.  Not likely she was familiar with them unless she knew Ripley well.

So I told her I was in Ripley just last week, talking to kids about the Rankins.  She told me she would stock my books and display them face out, and I could come in and sign them.  She gave me her card and confided that they do signings, but it was better when the signing was connected with some sort of local angle, like a newspaper story in my hometown paper.  When that happened, she would be happy to hold one.

I thanked her and shook her hand.  Then I went to the restroom and cried a little.  My faith is so small and God is so big.