For release.

RELEASE NOTES:

Will be placed on the bookshelves.

An Exaggeration for the Love of a Distraction
It all started many, many years ago on a dark stormy night that was so dreary and depressing, even the clouds were crying... just kidding.
I actually walked into Panera Bread today for a lunch/business meeting. I got there a little early so, as I was waiting, I took a seat on a very comfortable, brown, leather chair and started texting to a boy to whom I shouldn't have been texting.
Subconsciously knowing that I should be distracting myself from things I ought not to be doing, I was thankfully sidetracked when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a very neutral colored book that was gazing at me from the bookshelf. I timidly looked over, trying not to be too obvious, at it’s bland, yellowish-tanish spine. It taunted me to focus my vision ever so slightly, until I could make out the first half of the title… “The Rapture.” I was instantly attracted and intrigued by this unexplainably fascinating book that was wedged in between about twelve others. I instantly became extremely curious about the second half of the mysterious title.
Almost as soon as the awkwardly long stare was started, it was rudely interrupted as my phone began taunting me with a series of well orchestrated tones and beeps that was indicative of a text message from the boy with whom I was texting to whom I shouldn’t have been texting. Slightly annoyed, yet quite honestly, slightly intrigued, I reached to the depths of my bottomless, Mary Poppins purse to find my phone. For a fleeting second, I stopped and thought… and then, without opening my phone, I strategically pushed a button on the side of the phone that, for lack of imagination and better wording, told my phone to, “shut the hell up, can’t you see I’m in the middle of a budding love affair with a mildly bland looking book?”
I looked back to the bookshelf to find my book was still staring lovingly at me, but this time with a captivating look that begged and pleaded with me to come pick it up and discover what was inside the almost handsome, yet insipid cover.
As I slowly arose from my seat, I swear I saw the book wink seductively at me.
I coyly took the book from the shelf and instantly felt an exciting, electrifying feeling flow through my fingers. Astonishingly, it was quite similar to the sensation I had in my fingers while texting to the boy to whom I shouldn’t have been texting.
Of Canaan. That was the second part of the now not-so-mysterious cover. I had a brief flashback of my fourth grade year a St. Mark’s Lutheran church and a story from the Bible about… well, I’m not quite sure what it was about. Maybe I should have paid more attention in Sunday school.
Nonchalantly I meandered back to my very comfortable, brown, leather chair and slowly turned over the now somehow, exquisitely lovely, golden yellow book. “The Rapture of Canaan; a novel by Sheri Reynolds; Bestselling Author of Bitterroot Landing” the cover read. “TRULY RAPTUROUS” quoted The New York Times Book Review. “POWERFUL” said the Atlanta Journal & Constitution. “ASSURED… DEVASTATING” alleged Booklist.
But I know that this book is far more than any of these reviewers could have ever hoped to write. For when I gently caressed opened the cover of the most striking book in the world, I found a beautiful sticker on the inside front cover, proclaiming that, and I quote, “I’m a very special book.”
And so, as the story ended with Rendiru, (who two days ago left this book at Panera Bread at 901 Howe Ave. in Sacramento, CA), the story and love affair now begins with me and my new book… and not with the boy to whom I was texting to whom I shouldn’t have been texting.