Sorry for being silent, but I was in NY for several days and had sporadic time to check in.

Report: Wow. BEA (Book Expo America, ABA’s big show) is huge! Wow! Take ICRS, remove the Jesus junk, and multiply by five or six and you have BEA. It was amazing to walk through the many halls of books. All the big NY houses were there along with a bajillion others. So much fun.

Highlight: I saw the Rock Bottom Remainders with my agent Beth. Soooooo much fun, especially after having awesome Italian food before. Folks from Harvest House joined us at the concert. It was pretty darned surreal to be ten to fifteen feet from Amy Tan, Stephen King, Dave Barry, Frank McCourt, Mitch Albom, and many many others. They played a lot of sixties stuff. We danced and sang along. If you ever get the chance, you must see them. Such a hoot.

Highlight: I saw Kevin Spacey on stage. OH MY GOODNESS! Moon of the Misbegotten was the title of the Broadway play. Absolutely fab. And with a shockingly redemptive message. Had Dim Sum afterwards.

I met with a guy who’s an editor for The Higher Calling (a web site). Very fun and productive. I met with some editors, got blisters on my feet, and did two booksignings.

I listened to a CBA fiction panel. Very interesting. On the panel: Rick Christian, Karen Kingsbury, Karen Ball, Rebecca Seitz, Becky Nesbitt and Jana Reiss from PW. Fun news: Beth talked to Jana and she said, “Yeah, there’ve been a lot of people telling me I need to read Watching the Tree Limbs.” Isn’t that cool? So I’m going to send it to her.

Another fascinating panel was six big time publisher folks (one who acquired Leif Enger!) who buzzed about new titles coming out. I got a few of them on the way out. Some great stuff coming out. What the catalog said: “In one of BEA’s most highly anticipated events, editors will convene to share their undiluted passions and insights about promising forthcoming authors and their titles, and attempt to transfer their enthusiasm to industry colleagues and tastemakers.”

• Loving Frank (about Frank Lloyd Wright) sounded very intriguing.
• As did A Year of Living Biblically
• And this memoir: Foreskin’s Lament by Shalom Auslander.

It was interesting to see how much faith played into some of the newest buzzed books. That encouraged me.

I spent Sunday with my friends who planted Apostles Church . It was amazing getting to see how God is moving there.

I spent the weekend with my friend Caroline Coleman who lives in Manhattan in the Upper East Side in a lovely upper floor apartment with a terrace. Deb Van Horn (an author from NM) came as well. We had a lot of fun. On Thursday night, she had a party with a bunch of literary fun folk. I met Taylor Field (Mercy Streets, Squat), Eric Metaxes (spelled wrong, writes books for waterbrook), and Suzanne Deshchidn (my poet friend) came as well.

That’s about it, folks. My plane was terribly late coming out of LaGuardia which got me home last night at 2:00 AM. So I’m pretty tired. I’ve got one billion emails to catch up on and writing too. I’ll post a few pictures when I get them loaded.