Though I spent a good portion of my life with a microphone in hand – back when I was a TV sports reporter – there I was at my own book signing last night at Changing Hands Bookstore in Phoenix unable to get the mic to work. Then a friend came to the rescue by simply pushing the on button, and the launch event for my novel A Light in the Desert was underway.

If you guessed that I was nervous, hence my little mic mishap, you’d be right. Despite over 2000 live TV appearances, facing an audience can still be daunting. Would I say the right thing? Would I lose my train of thought? (Hey, I am in my sixties.) Would I offend anyone if I mounted one of my usual soapboxes?

In retrospect, I needn’t have worried, because at my side was former TV anchor and Arizona icon Mary Jo West, my dear friend and consummate professional. Mary Jo moderated the program, and smoothed my way ahead.

My friend Mary Jo West was the perfect moderator at last night’s book launch.

I could not be more grateful.

To those of you to came out last night, thank you so much for joining us. And to the folks at Changing Hands, thank you for allowing us to hold our party at your beautiful venue.

What a fabulous evening!

Mystery/Suspense

Amphorae Publishing Group

286 Pages

Price: $16.95 Paperback, $9.99 eBook

http://www.midpointtrade.com/book_detail.php?book_id=261955

As a Vietnam veteran and former Special Forces sniper descends into the throes of mental illness, he latches onto a lonely pregnant teenager and a group of Pentecostal zealots – the Children of Light – who have been waiting over thirty years in the Arizona desert for Armageddon. When the Amtrak Sunset Limited, a passenger train en route to Los Angeles, is derailed in their midst in a deadly act of sabotage, their lives are thrown into turmoil. As the search for the saboteurs heats up, the authorities uncover more questions than answers. And then the girl vanishes. As the sniper struggles to maintain his sanity, a child is about to be born in the wilderness.