Upcoming book: From Baptist to Byzantium

Excellent news on an upcoming classic (personal bias towards the author showing) by Fr. James Early (original post here):

If you have been one of the St. James' Kids community for very long, you know that over a year and a half ago, I starting transforming the 30-part series of blog posts that I wrote about my pilgrimage to Orthodoxy (you can find the first post in the series here) into a full-length book. About six months later, the manuscript was complete, and not long after that, Regina Orthodox Press (the publisher of the works of Fr. Joseph Huneycutt and Clark Carlton, among other excellent writers) agreed to publish it. They told me it would be published around September of 2008.

Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, Regina decided to delay the publication of the book until January 2009. Then, because the weak economy took its toll on Regina's operations, they had to delay the publication yet again. This time, they told me that the book would come out late in the summer or early in the fall.

Of course, I was disappointed to hear of both delays, but the second one really hit me hard. I began to wonder (foolishly, I admit) if my book would ever see the light of day. I pretty much put it out of my mind together. As some of you may have noticed, I didn't even post an update about the second delay (whereas I did when I heard about the first one).

My primary email address is the one to which there is a link on this blog. But I also have a second, older one, that I rarely use. I check once every other month or so. Last night I sat down on the computer to check that email, and I found that there were about 150 unopened messages. I knew that most of them were spam, and I almost just deleted them all in one fell swoop. But I thought better of it--surely there might be one or two REAL emails in the bunch, messages that required my attention.

Sure enough, I did find one important message in the bunch. It was a message from my publisher dated May 25 (not sure why he used my old address or even where he found it--all our previous correspondence has been done using my main address--but no matter). In the message, he said that my book would be out in about a month. Well, "about a month" from May 25 is about now. Excited, I emailed him using my main address, to see if I had read the message right. Could my book really be about to come out, "already?"

He responded very quickly and confirmed that the book is already at the printer and will be ready for sale in 2-3 weeks. Needless to say, I am elated. Now, I know what you're thinking: "How can I get hold of this classic work of Orthodox literature?" (ha, ha!) If you would like to purchase a copy (the price will be about $17), you may do so in one of two ways:

1. Buy it directly from me from this website (best method!). I will soon be setting up a link to Pay Pal on this blog so that you can purchase the book securely using a credit or debit card. If you would like, I'll even sign it (not that I'm anyone famous or even worth having a signature of, but I'll still do it if you would like, along with a brief personal message).

2. You can also buy it straight from Regina's website (link above). It's not currently listed there, but it should be soon. The book will not be offered through Amazon or other major online retailers for another six months or so.

Stay tuned for more details. I'll let you know as soon as I have the books in my possession for you to purchase. Next time, I'll post some really nice things that some really kind people had to say about the book (from the front and back cover).