"I’m sorry, I have no gas. I can’t move my car away from the pumps until you reopen," my husband, Bill, explained. There wasn’t enough gas in the tank to turn the engine over to restart it.
We had come to the Washington D.C./Virginia area for my interview with the Christian writer, Catherine Marshall. It was during the summer of gas rationing. We had coasted on fumes all the way down the off ramp and around the curb into the station driveway.
"Well, okay," the service station attendant agreed and pumped enough gas to carry us out of town. By the time our tank was full, there was a line of thirsty cars out across the station drive and down the block. We felt badly for the kind service station attendant.
All of the angst and threatening gas gage were soon forgotten. My morning with Catherine Marshall was inspiring.
Catherine was shorter than I had imagined, but looked like her pictures with dark hair and smiling eyes. Even though she had been meeting with a Bible Study group in her basement, she took the time to answer all of my questions with grace and patience. The material I gathered was for an article I was to write for a new national magazine. The company’s decision to not launch the new periodical took absolutely nothing away from my trip to the beautiful rolling hills around Evergreen Farm in Lincoln, Virginia.
Before I left, Catherine invited me to take a tour of their new Chosen Books Publishing building in a former, eight-room, two-story red brick schoolhouse. There were two "classrooms" on each side of a wide center hallway, both upstairs and down. The old hardwood floors gleamed in the afternoon sun. The building stood just down the road from the home Catherine shared with her husband, Len LeSourd. My tour there was another priceless experience. I asked Catherine if she was involved in the publishing business in any way.
"Oh my no," she answered. "Writing and publishing are two entirely different talents in the book business."
Chosen Books was started on prayer, inspiration and a faith in the Lord’s Guiding by John and Elizabeth (Tib) Sherrill. The Sherrills invited their friends, Len and Catherine LeSourd to experience the dream and great adventure with them.
The June I was there, they had been thrilled by a recent addition to their small staff. A young man had contacted them with a proposal. He would come to work for them for one year at no salary, just for the opportunity to learn the publishing business from the ground up. The only thing he asked was that they might have a room in the building in which he could live so he wouldn’t have to pay rent somewhere else. The Sherrills and LeSourds thought they had caught the brass ring and the young man believed he was the one who was blessed. It was a win-win situation in a world of win-lose, or lose-and-lose-some-more.
It is with that kind of faith and trust that I have decided to offer my novel, Length of Days - The Age of Silence in hardback on the website www.directbuybooks.com. It is already available as an e-Book on www.amazon.com and www.bn.com and others, so why not offer it in a real-as-life, hand-held paper form? I had been reluctant to take that next step. I could hear Catherine Marshall’s words, "Writing and publishing are two entirely different talents in the book business."
The publishing world, however, has changed a great deal since the introduction of electronic books. Writers have had to learn to be marketing professionals, self-promoters, publishers, website designers, and more. The eBook is a wonderful opportunity to offer books, but some older readers do not have computers and many want to actually hold the book in their own hand.
For an author, an eBook is uploaded to an online book seller and is then available to anyone who wants to purchase it for their computer, eReader, android, or any other electronic device that has an app for eReading. A paper book must be designed, printed, warehoused until purchase, then boxed and shipped.
You have no idea how different business tasks are (supervising employees in every detail) from creative writing. To me, managing those details is like the hand wringing experience of driving down a D.C. expressway on an empty tank of gas, during an hour when the gas is rationed and the pumps are turned off.
I am however, determined to be obedient and to follow the will of the Lord as I understand it. I am happy to announce that Length of Days - The Age of Silence is now available as a hardback on the Direct Buy Books website.
Enjoy the read. Race with Christiana Applewait through the streets of her city in 2112 as she frantically hurries to find a way to overturn the Length of Days policy and change the fate of her beloved grandparents. She has until after Gift Giving Season to find a solution. Will she make it in time?
Doris Gaines Rapp
Copyright 2012 Doris Gaines Rapp
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