Another Allume Miracle {Or, Two Angles and a Special Book}

Meet my Allume Angel. Her name is Aurie, and two hours before this photo was taken, we were complete strangers. Now we are not.

Here’s what happened…I was just sitting down to dinner Friday night when I got a phonecall from my husband. He told me that my package–THE package that presented 1 1/2 years of our combined effort and was SUPPOSED to arrive at Allume on Thursday had gotten lost or delayed, or something, and if I wanted to get my hands on the box which contained the FIRST EVER copies of my book in PRINT (can you tell how exciting this is for me?) I would have to go to the UPS warehouse and pick it up myself.

Oh my. That was like telling me if I wanted my books I’d have to learn to scuba dive and fetch them from an undersea cave. Not only did I not have a car, but I’m so directionally challenged I wouldn’t have been able to find it if it was 3 miles away.

I looked around my table. I knew no one local to Harrisburg. In desperation, I turned to my left and said to the gal next to me, who I hardly knew, “I have a problem. My books are here–HERE in Harrisburg, but if I don’t pick them up tonight, I’ll never see them, ’cause UPS will close for the weekend, and I leave town before they open again on Monday! I don’t know what I”m gonna do!”

Oh, but I just happened to be sitting next to Kelly, who just happens to have a creative mind and a can-do attitude.

And Kelly just happened to know someone who was local to Harrisburg.

And that someone just happened to be sitting right over there…and Kelly was more than willing to introduce me, and assured me that this person was just the sort of person who would skip dinner and drive a stranger to pick up a box from UPS.

And she was, and we did.

Aurie grabbed her keys, led me out the parking garage, typed the address into her GPS, we both cheered when we saw we were only 3 miles away, and off we went.

We waited 25 agonizing minutes at the UPS for them to find the box which headquarters said was there, but no one knew quite where. We were hungry, and really hoping we wouldn’t miss Sally Clarksons key note! Phonecalls were exchanged, people went into the warehouse to hunt, I knit my brows and worried, but Aurie kept smiling and inspired me to have just a little more faith.

(I’ll say this for UPS–everyone we had contact with–from my husband on the phone with headquarters, to the ladies running the desk at the warehouse–were very helpful and courteous. Having the box go missing and miss the delivery truck that was to take it to the hotel was just one of those mishaps that happen once in a great while. And it taught me faith. Because, to me, the situation was bleak and impossible. But God)

But God…Finally delivered this box into my arms, and I held it close on the drive back, and we got back to the ballroom to find that dinner had been delayed, meaning we had not missed the keynote yet, and friends had saved dinner for us–the waiters brought our plates of food out as soon as we got back to our seats–and the evening went on without a hitch.

And I got my books to Allume in time to have them on the speaker book table. It was surreal, I tell you.

The moment you hold your own, self-published book in your hands is truly amazing. I liken it to holding a newborn baby for the first time. I carried my ebook in my ‘heart’ for a year and a half while it existed in its electronic state. But now I can hold it in my hands.

And I can share it with you. For all of you who have asked, and waited soooo patiently, the print version of Real {Fast} Food is now available on Createspace.  (note: you will not be ordering from me–the books in the story above were just for sale at the conference)

From me to you–My book, all dressed up with real pages and color photos and that pretty cover my man designed. Just in time for Christmas! You can order it HERE.

Merry Christmas!