Welcome to my blog...

Here's where you will find the latest on what's going on with my books and the movie. It's also a great place to ask questions, where I recommend other books, and post different things bouncing around in my head. Look me up on Facebook and if you want to buy, signed, discounted, copies of my books, head over to http://www.ryannwattersbooks.com/.







Friday, March 19, 2010

Fantastic Conclusion to the Lake County Reading Festival


This year's festival, "Adventures in Paradise," took me from the Author's Roundtable at the Cooper Memorial Library in Clermont, to a Writing for Young Audiences discussion at the Tavares Public Library, and finally ending this evening with the Author Reception at the Leesburg Pubic Library. In all, over 20 authors particpated the events.





I liked my intro for the "Writing for Young Audiences" discussion:

Eric Reinhold's desire as a writer is to combine his background at a service academy and as a Christian to provide safe books of high moral character and Christian principles to youth. He plans to have five books in The Annals of Aeliana series, with Ryann Watters.




The highlights during the festival to me, were both with home school families. On Wednesday I was visited by Rebekah, Sarah, and Joshua at both the Clermont and Tavares locations. It was great to see such bright young people with insightful questions and desire to read! Their mom should be very proud of them.
On Friday, I drove over to Leesburg for the Author Reception. The Lake County librarians and staff did an excellent job of having the event catered for the public with lots of tasty morsels. The turn out was great, as people made their way around the library to visit with 20 different authors, participate in the silent auction, and see the results of the children's bookmark contest.

I had the opportunity to meet with one of my newest, biggest fans... Bradley. He is in the 8th grade and was able to quote lines from several scenes in my books. I believe he said his favorite was the exchange between the angle, Gabriel, and Lord Ekron as they did battle at the end of book 2:

"We meet again, Gabriel," Ekron declared with contempt. He glared at the approaching angel. "Only this time things will end differently."

Gabriel smiled while raising the King's sword out in front of him. "I was thinking I would add a matching scar to the other side of your face, Ekron."

Bradley, his parents and I, were able to spend quite a bit of time discussing my series and I was pleased to hear from Bradley's mom about what an impact the books had made on him and how much he had enjoyed them. That's the reason I write and that type of interaction spurs me on to continue the series.

Thanks again to all of those who came out to the festival. I hope to see you and your friends next year. Be blessed, EJR

Sunday, March 7, 2010

FREE Copy of CURSE OF THE SPIDER KING


Fellow authors and friends, Wayne Thomas Batson and Christopher Hopper are hard at work on book 2 in The Berinfell Prophecies. Published by Thomas Nelson (see my previous post on my night with CEO Michael Hyatt), Curse of the Spider King is the first book in the series.

I first met Wayne and Christopher in 2008 on the Fantasy Fiction Tour. Invited by Bryan Davis, to participate in what ended up being a 10 day tour from Canada to San Diego, I immediately took a liking to the crazy minds of these two characters. While we travelled from city to city in a 15 passenger van, Wayne and Christopher were busy typing away on their laptopos, periodically yelling out, "Does anyone have a synonym for _____!" I would describe both of them as A.D.D. on Red Bull.
(You have to love this picture of Christopher giving the thumbs up on the Fantasy Tour, with Wayne in the background - God created a few perfect heads... the rest he covered in hair).

How to win your FREE Copy!

I have two copies of Curse of the Spider King and would like to give away that copy in a drawing from anyone who (1) joins my blog and (2) posts a comment in my post below on "Letters to God." The drawing will be this Friday! To get more details on the book you can go to:


Thomas Nelson's Website
http://www.thomasnelson.com/consumer/product_detail.asp?sku=1400315050
Wayne's Blog
http://enterthedoorwithin.blogspot.com/
Christopher's Website
http://www.christopherhopper.com/novels/


Good Luck and Good Reading!
Eric

Friday, March 5, 2010

Learning the Social Media Thing from Michael Hyatt

In addition to the sneak preview of "Letters to God" (see my comments from the last blog entry), I was exposed to superb speakers and content at the Lifework Leadership National Alumni Conference in Howie-in-the-Hills, Florida (you won't find it unless you're going there intentionally!).

I had the priveledge of sitting next to Michael Hyatt, the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishing (the largest Christian publisher in the U.S.) the first night. Michael shared very openly about his past and leadership lessons over the years. He's an authentic guy and it's great to know that someone in his position is heading up such an important media company.

Today he led a session on "Building Community Through Social Media." I think of myself as beyond beginner in this area, but for the business owner, he had some great insights. If you are on Twitter, you can find him at twitter.com/michaelhyatt.com. He also has a Facebook page and blog under his name.

I won't give you all the details here, but if you would like to view his slides from our session with him, you can go to www.michaelhyatt.com/speaking/lifework. Michael spends 30 minutes a day in social media with approximately 12-13 tweets a day. He is pro-active and takes the approach that people are putting out data on your company all the time, so you can choose to engage and be part of the discussion and potentially fixing a problem, or you can sit back and let them carry the dialogue.

Social media isn't a fad, so those of us who haven't grown up with it can choose to ignore it or get on board. I haven't been active on twitter, but I am going to take his challenge to try it for 30 days. The KEY is to provide value to those following you and make 20 deposits for every withdrawal you'd like to make on directing your followers to your product.

My biggest recognition of how things have changed was when my daughter saw a movie from the 80's and was talking about the "giant black CDs." I had to explain that they were vinyl records. I don't consider myself that old, but I did take my Smith Corona typewriter to the Naval Academy, where I learned BASIC and fed cards into the giant computer. My Senior year, I finally did my first paper on a MAC. When my teenage girls complain about not being able to get in touch with someone when we've taken their cell phones away, I remind them about the world without texting, e-mail, or PCs... and about going to the phone bank to make a call and hope that the person you were calling was home. Amazing!

Sneak Preview of "Letters to God" with the Director!

I just got back from a retreat with Lifework Leadership, a Christian business leaders group which is seeking to impact cities around the country. Great speakers, interaction with other alumni from the program, and David Nixon, the director for "Facing the Giants," "Fireproof," and the yet to be released, "Letters to God," was on hand for a preview of the movie. If you want to know more about Lifework Leadership go to www.lifeworkleadership.org.

We viewed the movie in its entirety and I think I cried six times... which is saying a lot. It takes a lot to make me cry. The movie is a heartfelt tale of inspiration, hope and redemption, showing what happens when one boy's walk of faith crosses paths with one man's search for meaning.
Ted Baehr, of Movieguide, says, "Letters to God is the type of movie you want everyone to see, one of the most encouraging and inspiring movies in a long time." He's right.

Here's the preview and I would encourage you to check out their website at www.letterstogodthemovie.com and encourage your pastor and others to see the movie during the first week. The movie opens in 800 theatres nationwide on April 9th and will expand to more with demand.

David and his team have the funding to create three Christian movies (this is the first)and his desire is to make Orlando, Florida the Christian movie capital of the world. Let's support him in this worthy endeavor to make Christian films.



High School student, Jason Derfuss films a summary video of book 1