Well, during my vacation, I managed to read a couple of books. I also managed to go to a Christian bookstore and a secular bookstore. When I visited the secular bookstore (Barnes and Noble at Southpoint Mall in Durham) I purchased the following titles: Claire Knows Best by Tracey Bateman and Saved Folk In The House by Sonnie Beverly. I don’t believe I’ve included Sonnie Beverly on my Black Christian Fiction site: www.blackchristianfiction.com so I will be adding this author shortly.

I also visited the Family Christian Bookstore in Charlotte North Carolina. This bookstore had a totally awesome Christian fiction section….one of the largest I’ve ever seen in a Christian bookstore! I chatted with one of the associates, telling her that I was an author, and asked for insight as to why they don’t carry category Christian romance titles such as the ones from Steeple Hill Love Inspired. She said they don’t re-stock the shelves monthly, so they would not be able to update the titles in a timely manner. (For those of you who don’t know, Steeple Hill Love Inspired titles are released each month.) They re-stock their shelves quarterly. She also stated that since Steeple Hill is under the Harlequin umbrella, they do not carry them in their store since Harlequin is secular. I reminded her that there were other Christian publishing houses that were owned by secular publishers, like Random House (I believe they own Waterbrook, and they now own Multnomah). She said that this was true, however, in those cases, they usually keep the Christian arm of the publishing business as a totally separate entity, whereas Steeple Hill doesn’t appear to do that. I did tell her that the LI books sold very well, and I told her my recent sales figures! I just wanted to place a bug in their ear about the category romances, hoping to get them to change their minds about carrying the SHLI titles….eventually!

While at the Family Christian Bookstore, I purchased the following titles: Leave It To Claire by Tracey Bateman, A Sounding Brass by Shelley Bates, Violet Dawn by Brandilyn Collins, Web of Lies by Brandilyn Collins, and Thr3e by Ted Dekker. Anybody have any idea why the book title is spelled like this: Thr3e, or why Ted Dekker has the second K in his name smaller than the first K, like this: DEKkER? Just wondered. If anybody has read any of the titles mentioned in the first or third paragraphs, feel free to post comments or drop me a line about how much you liked (or disliked) the titles.

I also visited another Christian bookstore while in Charlotte. New Creation bookstore is large, and they also have a fantastic fiction section. Although they had no category romances, they did have one title published by Steeple Hill Café, which is a women’s fiction single title line by Harlequin. It was nice seeing a Harlequin/SH title at a Christian bookstore. I can’t recall the name of the title or the author. Since I’d already spent enough money on books during our trip, I didn’t bother to spend any money at New Creation!

Read my next blog entry to see what I read while on vacation!

Stay blessed,
Cecelia Dowdy
www.ceceliadowdy.com
www.blackchristianfiction.com