October Newsletter

Welcome to the October 2011

Dernier Publishing

newsletter!

Acorns in the park

It's that time of year! Under the oak trees in my local park, the ground is littered with acorns. Some fall on the path and get squashed by dog-walkers like me, some are eaten by squirrels, some might take root then get mown down – some will grow into beautiful oak trees! What a wonderful encouragement to make the most of every opportunity to share the good news – who knows what may grow from one small seed?

 

Ultimate Christian Library Book Award 2012

We have nominated our five most recent books for this prestigious award, which is so exciting! We will of course keep you in touch with how we get on, because if the judges shortlist any of our books (which would be wonderful!), we will need you to vote! For more info about the awards follow this link: http://www.christianbookawards.org/

Our first ever proper catalogues!

Would anybody like any of our autumn/winter catalogues? We have taken the big step of producing 8-page A5 glossy brochures as we now have eleven books to promote :-) We are delighted with them! Could you pass some on to your church family, Sunday School parents, teachers at your local school or just pass some around to friends and family? Young people need to hear the good news - our books can help in reaching out to the ones you love :-) Email me at info@dernierpublishing.com and I will get those sent off to you, free of charge of course. 

Latest gossip!

A Christian bookshop in Epsom has chosen 'Beech Bank Girls, Christmas is Coming!' as children's book of the month for October! If you have read it, you can give it a star rating on the website - just click on the link: www.dovecotebookshop.co.uk Do support Christian bookshops if you can.

 

Mary Weeks Millard (right) has heard that Dorset library service are considering adding her children's books to their list - please pray that they do!

Mary will be visiting Rwanda from October 25 to November 15^th. Please pray for her, for safety in travel, good health and for the Lord's blessing wherever she goes.

 

Last posting dates for Christmas, international surface mail

If you need (want?!) to send presents to relatives/friends abroad, here are the remaining last posting dates for international surface mail (Last dates for some destinations have already gone): Tue 18th October: South Africa, Hong Kong, Singapore, the USA and Canada Tue 8th November: Eastern Europe, Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Malta and Iceland Tue 22nd November: Western Europe. How about sending a good book to encourage and inspire your young people in their faith? Get in there quick as it's quite a bit cheaper now than sending airmail!

Poster for Halloween

Halloween is fast approaching. We have a poster with a great message; might you be able to use one or more at home, in church or school? They would also make perfect gifts for alternative 'Praise parties'! Price: £3.99 Size: 16"x20". Gloss 130gsm card. SPECIAL OFFER TO E-NEWSLETTER SUBSCRIBERS – First poster £3.99, EVERY POSTER AFTER THAT ONLY 99p, as many as you like! If you would like to subscribe to the e-newsletter and take advantage of this offer, email me on info@dernierpublishing.com and I will send your posters to you, POST FREE, with an invoice! Check out our other posters on www.dernierpublishing.com

 

Books Change Lives

I received a most encouraging email from a lady whose church members sponsored books for their Sunday School children, many of whom come from a local estate. "It's now several weeks since we presented the books to our children. This morning I asked how they were getting on with them. They were very enthusiastic and have been swapping them round when they've finished their own. Most of these kids are reluctant readers, too. One girl, non-Christian family, no support or interest at home, very violent background, told me her grandma had read her book, 'I want to be an airline pilot', and wanted to know where she could buy some of the others." The Lord is using our books to touch people's lives, which is awesome. Be a part of it, sow some seeds! (Picture posed by model)

Phew! I think that's all for now – remember, a book at £5.99 is the same cost as coffee and cake in a High Street café, less than half the price of a DVD and a fraction of the price of many computer games (e.g. 1/5 of £29.99). What great value! :-)

With love to you all,

Janet

P.S. We have 11 books now and there are about 10 weeks left until Christmas, so last week I thought it would be fun to begin featuring one book a week on our facebook page . . to help you keep count of the book-shopping weeks until Christmas, hehe :-) https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dernier-Publishing/173040439575

Author profile, Gareth Rowe

Gareth is our latest author; his first novel for young people, The Only Way,  was released earlier this year. I asked Gareth to write a little bit about himself, which I am delighted to reproduce here:

 “I grew up on the ragged edges of a big city. It was a place where the houses, shops and warehouses merged into scrubby and unloved wasteland. It was a place where those who knew where to look could find the crumbling remains of factories and air raid shelters, ancient oak trees to climb, wild blackberry bushes big enough to crawl inside and ancient churches where the gravestones seemed to whisper secrets from a different age. It was a place through which there ran an old canal where the waterlilies grew and the swans came to give birth to their young each summer. When I was younger I wanted to follow the canal out of the city and far away into the countryside. I wanted to have adventures and to write stories about them. I still do. When I grew up I really did leave the city. For a while I lived in a castle surrounded by a deep river; later I lived on a farm in the hills; now I live in a little brick house with a yellow door and fruit trees in the garden. I’ve been a banker, a shelf stacker, an accountant and a teacher but my real vocation is to sit at the window and watch the rain fall from the heavens and water the garden.

I grew up in Bootle on Merseyside in the 1970s and 80s. We had no money but lots of love and freedom. I was a devotee of Enid Blyton and rather fond of Asterix. I tended to get whatever books I could find in the local jumble sale so it was a bit hit and miss. I was an only child but had lots of cousins who were good substitutes for brothers and sisters. I was not from a church family but God came knocking pretty early on in my life. I never felt at home in the city and the family holidays we had in the mountains of North Wales were sublime moments of joy followed by devastation as the city closed in on me on my return. This idea of the natural world as a pointer to the divine runs throughout the book [The Only Way] but rather than following a quest up into the mountains we see nature breaking out in the city: in Lily’s garden, in the waterlilies on the canal, in the flower growing in the cracked pavement.

I decided to become a writer at whatever age it was that I read my first Enid Blyton book. Once the decision was made I was content and so felt no compulsion to do anything about it – like actually put pen to paper. Eventually I began to write poetry as a teenager and have continued to do so ever since. In 1999 I began the MA in Creative Writing at Northumbria University and started to think about writing prose (mainly because it was impossible to fulfil the word count with poetry). I started with short stories, moved on to a turgid and dull campus novel and ended up trying to write fiction for young teenagers. 'The Only Way' is my first published novel.

I become a Christian something like this: during the summer holidays one year I went to a group called CCC (Children’s Christian Something?) at the local church; I’ve no idea how or why. Later a friend who was in the Boy’s Brigade made it sound cool so I joined and started going to church. Skip a few years and I’m at a Billy Graham Crusade at Anfield: Mission England (was that ‘82? – if so I’d be nine). Anyway that’s when I made the BIG DECISION and dedicated myself to Christ. Afterwards I carried on with church, BB, Truth, Beauty and God until I left home and went to university.

By the time I left home, a) I was pretty unconvinced about all this religion business and soon started using the A-word (agnosticism) b) I can actually remember making the decision to ‘try life without God for a while’. Of course now I realise that it is logically inconsistent to try to dump a god who (probably) doesn’t exist – but I’m making no pretence to logic here. Anyway I’d have probably found the idea of being strictly logical suspect and un-artistic. Needless to say, university (Durham by the way) wasn’t much fun. I wandered around In Despair for three years while friends and family concluded I had gone mad. Somehow I got both a degree and a job in accountancy but things continued to get worse. After a couple more years I decided to go back to God.

The next decade was much more fun. Externally it involved getting married, having children, becoming a teacher, regular communion, prayer and reading the scriptures. Internally it was a reorientation away from self and towards God. Unfortunately it is a process which is nowhere near complete: if embodied existence is a process of turning bits of clay into gods – I’m at the stage of being rather like the character Morph from the 1980s TV show ‘Take Hart’.

I’m married to Sue who looks after our two daughters, Rebecca aged six and Isobel aged two. The only thing Becky likes more than school is playing schools: because then she gets to be the teacher! Isobel has just started playgroup and for her the main attraction is the endless supply of paints coupled with the lack of parents hovering around protecting the walls from her artistic endeavors.

I enjoy walking in the countryside, reading and staring out of the window. Recently I bought a dilapidated piano which I sometimes abuse frightfully in the name of making a joyful sound. In the last year I have taught in high school and prison and I am now back at university studying to work with people with learning disabilities.

'The Only Way' is for the dissatisfied, dispossessed Children of God. It is for those stuck in dull uninspiring urban wildernesses of high rise flats and endless expanses of concrete. It is for those who feel disconnected from parents, from friends, from everything. They should read it because it doesn’t shrink from admitting how awful the world can seem. They should read it because it shows that no matter how bad it seems, new life is always waiting to burst forth the moment it is given the chance. They should read it because it shows the power of love to conquer the darkness in which we sometimes find ourselves.”

'The Only Way', for young people 12+, is available from your local bookshop, online bookstores and direct from our website. As with all our books, you can read the first chapter online: www.dernierpublishing.com/theonlyway.php