Regina Doman and "The Chronicles of the Ruahim"

Five years ago I began a cross-country friendship that would become one of the most pivotal relationships in my life. This was, of course, my friendship with Regina Doman, who also became my writing mentor and (in various capacities) my boss, and soon to be my publisher. I usually manage to see her and her family at least once a year, sometimes twice. And if I'm very lucky, she makes it out to Minnesota.

This year she was invited as a speaker at the Minnesota Catholic Home Educators Conference, and she and her husband Andrew arrived early so that they could spend some time with their Minnesota fans. This meant that I got to take them out to dinner and introduce them to my boyfriend, attend a Fairy Tale Novel Tea Party and hear the very first public reading from Regina's new Biblical Fantasy series, assist them in running the Chesterton Press booth at the conference, and then have them out for brunch at my house and dig through my fabric stash with Regina. It was pretty awesome.

My Susan of Narnia costume was featured at our booth!

I've run the CP booth at a couple of conferences before, but this was definitely the most fun I've had as a seller. Matt Bowman wrote up a short vignette as a prequel to our upcoming YA Fantasy Series, the Chronicles of the Ruahim, which we handed out for free at the conference (you can read it on the FTN forum if you're a member, otherwise check out some of the other conferences CP will be at this year). This was particularly cool for me, as I'm working on the second book in this series and was able to give out some teasers. 

"Nuns. Unicorns. Mermaids," I said.

"WHERE CAN I BUY IT?" cried the girls I was talking to. 

For more details on the Chronicles of the Ruahim, take a look at what Matt has to say: 

The Chronicles of the Ruahim is a new YA Catholic fantasy series Chesterton Press is publishing soon, run by our editor and sciencey-fantasy expert Matthew Bowman, and created by him and Regina Doman. Right now we're looking at publishing two books simultaneously, since they take place at the same time (and so we have both a male and a female main character available for those who like that sort of thing). 

The male main character is Templar Hart, a high school student who finds out there are creatures in his town that no one else can see except for his parish priest. That book is The Sword and the Dragon, by Matthew Bowman and Regina Doman. 

The female main character is Daphne Woodhouse, a college-age friend of Templar's, who is taking a semester in Paris and discovers a unicorn living in a convent's garden and mermaids running a nightclub. That's The Mermaid and the Unicorn, by Matthew Bowman and Elizabeth Hausladen. 

Yes folks, it's now looking like my book is getting bumped up from #3 to #2 in the series, and will be released at the same time as #1. It's something I'd been hoping would happen so I am super psyched about this development!

Anyhow, the conference was fantastic. We sold out of over half the titles, and had only 1-3 copies of the titles that remained. This includes 50 copies of "Rapunzel Let Down" which, though the newest Fairy Tale Novel, is also the most expensive so that was quite awesome! (Yes, I finally got my own hard copy of Rapunzel and it is BEAUTIFUL!) We also sold the copies of the Shadow of the Bear DVD we had with us... but don't worry, Andrew still has a couple dozen more, so go ahead and send him an e-mail if you'd like to own one yourself!