Final Thoughts on the Tour

Now that the Davis Crossing Tour is over, we have had some time to reflect on it, both the blessings and the difficulties. Promotional tours are always exhausting, and scheduling them is nightmarish. Still, the benefits outweigh the problems, so we will likely continue touring, though perhaps not with a tour as long as this one.

Those of you who have followed the blog have heard about the difficulties, from car troubles to bad weather to endless hours and miles of driving. Sometimes disappointment knocks on the door when we work hard all day and sell only a few books. Of course, we hope to promote our books and sell as many as possible, because we want to further God's kingdom by spreading stories that draw readers closer to Him, so after driving hundreds of miles and speaking for hours produces only a few sales, we might be tempted to wonder if our efforts were worthwhile. That's when we have to remind ourselves that even a few seeds can reproduce into thousands, and even if one soul is blessed by our words, the eternal consequences far outweigh a day of toil.

Some days were overwhelmingly fruitful with many testimonies and many sales. We received huge blessings from families who traveled long distances to come and see us. Several reported traveling two, three, even four hours to come to an event. Amazing! Such love for our work and testimony is so encouraging!

We have never taken for granted the enormous blessing it is to be an author. The idea that people actually want to read what we write is a daily encourager, and the thought that our words might have a profound effect on the hearts and minds of so many readers to the point of altering their spiritual lives in eternal ways is nearly overwhelming. We hope you will pray with us that God will continue to use us powerfully as we continue trying to live up to this magnificent privilege and responsibility.

Thank you for following our tour. If you will continue to support us by telling others about our books, we will be grateful. May God bless you all as you seek to serve Him.


If you would like to stay up to date with happenings in our lives you can check out our blogs and facebook pages.


Bryan Davis and Amanda L. Davis




Contact Amanda:
Blog
Website
Facebook Page


Contact Bryan:
Blog
Website
Facebook

Grand Prize Winner

The grand prize winner for the tour contest is John Flood. He chose the Nook as his prize.

The secret phrase came from eleven words in the videos, as follows:

Excellent
Diviner
Abdomen
Convergent
Chancellor
Investor
Galvanize
Galactic
Hibachi
Microfiche
Clandestine



The solving algorithm produced the following eleven letters: temgevlgihi

Unscrambling the letters revealed the secret phrase - Give me light



Eight contestants got it right, which gave them ten additional entries in the final drawing.

Secret Phrase Deadline Nearing

There are only three days left to solve the secret phrase in the Davis Crossing Tour contest. I hope to do the grand prize drawing at the end of the week, so if you want to get your name ten more times into the drawing, you need to solve the phrase by the end of November. A few have gotten it right, so it is certainly solvable.

Secret Phrase Algorithm Correction

When I described the algorithm for selecting letters from the words I provided, I included that the words should be put in alphabetical order. I forgot that this was part of the algorithm. Instead, use the order in which I provided them. If you have any questions, please post them.

Tour Contest Information

With the tour now finished, contestants are probably wondering about the secret phrase. The videos were supposed to contain eleven words from which you were to draw letters, one from each word, to create a scrambled three-word phrase, a phrase that should be familiar to readers of my books.

When you unscramble the phrase, send it to me by email - bryan (at) daviscrossing (dot) com

I am allowing until the end of November to solve the puzzle. After that, I will collect all the names and draw a grand prize winner.

I hope all eleven words are there. Has anyone found them all?

Last Tour Video!

Here's the last video!

Tour Day 64 - 11/16/11

Not sure what happened to 11/15/11 there, but apparently I didn't get pictures.


On the 16th, we spoke to a class at a school in NJ.


Before we went in. I saw a squirrel. ^^

I tried to get a picture, but they're too quick for the phone camera.

It's fun to see squirrels for me because we don't see them often. Y'all probably think that's silly, but we don't see them where we are because people hunt and eat them. In the four years we've lived in TN, I've seen 2 squirrels in our yard. One which was being terrorized by the cats.


We spoke to almost the whole school, I think, though I don't think the youngest kids were there.

Then we drove through Delaware

And into Virginia where we stayed for the night.

11-17-11

There's a word in this video!

Tour Day 63 - 11-14-11

Day 63 we spoke to 4 groups at the Cumberland Christian School. Unfortunately, I was speaking most of the time so I didn't get an opportunity to take pictures.

The kids at this school were great, and the Cumberland newspaper came out and wrote an article about our visit, so that was cool.

(Picture thanks to Mark McCaslin)

Tour Day 62 - 11/13/11

Day 62 we just drove and drove, and drove.

We drove through Pennsylvania and then New York.



I borrowed the Pennsylvania sign from another website, because I was asleep when we crossed the border, and I don't take pictures very well when I'm asleep.

Vinnie's Find #3 - Winner!

The winner of Vinnie's find #3 is . . .


Emily Anne!

Congratulations, Emily!


Nine people correctly guessed the scrambled name that Vinnie found. The name was

Daryl


Emily is winning a copy of Song of the Ovulum.

Emily, please send me an email at amanda ( at) daviscrossing (dot) com (replace the (at) with an @ symbol and (dot) with a period )

The email needs to be received in 48 hours ( by 11/18/11 at 5 AM EST) or I will pick a new winner

Tour Day 61 11-12-11

On Day 61 we had a book signing and a writing workshop in Ellicott City, MD


The writing workshop lasted a couple of hours and the people who attended seemed to enjoy it. I think some of the attendees are followers of this blog, so they can speak for themselves whether or not they liked the talk. :)


One of the attendees came dressed up as Bonnie, which was really neat. She had dragon wings and Bonnie's shirt from Circles of Seven.




I didn't get any pictures of the book signing, but it wasn't a very long one, so I suppose that's all right.

Hope you all are having an excellent evening

Tour Day 60 11-11-11

We had one school to go to on this day. I would have updated the blog, but I didn't have any internet access that evening.

We spoke to three classes at Grace Christian prep before driving to MD.

Our Book Table

Class 1

Class 2

Class 3

I hope that all the kids who heard us enjoyed our talks and enjoy the books if they read them.

By the way, we're going to do the drawing for Vinnie's find when we can. Stay tuned

Tour Day 59 - 11/10/11

We're in Virginia still, doing homeschool events and schools.

Today we spoke at a homeschool group at Spotswood church near Fredricksburg, CA. We spoke to three groups there. I got pictures of my dad, but he didn't get any of me.

First my dad did the homeschool's devotional before we had our other two talks.


Then we had a talk with a younger kids' writing class.




Before we headed to a high school students' writing class where we also spoke.

Those were our only events for the day. After those events we headed to Hancock Fabrics so I could pick up some material I needed for a crochet project I'm working on.

Tomorrow we have a few events in Fredricksburg before going to Richmond.

Day 58 - 11/9/11

I'm determined to stay on top of the blogging in the last leg of this trip!

But picture taking . . . not so much. ;)


We spoke at an all day writing workshop today after relaxing for most of the morning. The workshop was at a church. Not very many people attended, but I hope the people who did learned a lot about writing and enjoyed our author talks.


My dad spoke first and introduced himself and talked about his author journey before going in to how to start a story. We showed some Star Wars clips, per usual, and then he played my book trailer and introduced me, and I got to talk.

After I spoke, he continued with the writing lesson for another couple hours. :)

Then our host family was generous enough to take us out to eat before we had to drive to VA.


We drove for 4 hours, and we're now staying with a family who's putting up with us for two nights while we're in the area. :)


And it's almost midnight, so I'm going to bed. Keep watch for the results from the Vinnie's Find drawing!

Tour Day 57 - 11/8/11

I'm finally caught up with blog posts as of today! It helps that I skipped a lot of days in between, but I didn't have pictures from those days, so oh well.

Yesterday we spoke 3 times at Grace Christian School in Raleigh, North Carolina.

We spoke to the 4th and 5th graders and some 6, 7, and 8th graders as well, I believe. After those two talks we then spoke to some parents and kids at an after school event.


The last talk brought my number of talks up to 80 total! That's quite a lot. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to make it to 100 before this trip is over.


Our last talk of the day was in the library where we had a book table as well.

Us signing books

And Again

And our friend Sandi came out and saw us at this event. Thanks for coming Sandi =)

Tour Day 56

Tour Day 56 was our first and only event in Georgia.

We spoke to a writer's group in Woodstock. Some of my friends came out and saw us speak, so I was really happy to see them.





Then we drove to Greenville, SC on our way to Raleigh, NC.

Tour Video - Two Words in This One!

Vinnie's Find #3 - Another 48 Hour Contest

Vinnie brought us a third scrap of paper with a scrambled name on it.

He would like you to decode it for him.

Y-A-L-D-R

If you figure it out, email me your answer, don't post it here, that would spoil the fun for everyone else, and you won't be entered into the drawing.

Everyone who sends me the correctly descrambled name will be entered in a drawing for a copy of Song of the Ovulum. This copy has a dented corner, but other than that it's in good condition.

Please only send me your answers within 48 hours of this posting. Any answers received after 48 hours will not be entered into the drawing. 48 hours ends on 11/8/11 - 9:14 Central Time


Send your answers to amanda(at)daviscrossing(dot)com (replace the (at) with an @ symbol and the (dot) with a period).

Tour Day 50 - 11/1/11

So I skipped about 8 days of pictures. 2 of them were at home again before we headed to Florida, but here's day 50's pictures. :)

We left Illinois, were home for two days, and then left for Florida.

We had no events for a couple of days in Florida. During that time, we visited friends and family who live in the area.

Our first event was Cedar Hills Christian School in Jacksonville, Florida. :) We spoke there once and the kids seemed to really enjoy it. That was day 49.

These pictures are from day 50.

On day 50 we spoke to kids at Bell Shoals Christian School. We spoke there 4 times, and those kids were very attentive and asked us plenty of questions.

Tour Day 42 - 10/24/11

I believe the 23rd was a Sunday, so we used that day to repack the van and get our inventory back in order.

Day 42 was a bit more hectic. We had to get up early and go to North Point Christian school early in the morning. I was a bit sleepy, but I managed to talk okay, I think.






After two talks at the North Point schools, we then spoke to a group in Novi, MI, and I had an interview at that time.

Then we headed for IL that night.

We spoke to a group in Illinois on the 25th, our day 43, but I didn't get any pictures.

After our talk with that group we headed home to Florida. For some reason I didn't get any pictures of that, either! Bad me. I'm going to try to do better in the picture department.

Tour Day 40 - 10/22/11

On Day 39 we spoke to the kids at Brown Elementary in Michigan before going to a book signing at the Baker Book House in Michigan, but I didn't get any pictures.


On day 40, we had a book signing at the Barnes and Noble in Grandville, MI. It was a 5 hour long signing, and we sold 80+ books! Including 32 PTs. :)

After the signing, we headed out to a church in Kalamazoo and spoke there for a bit. That was the only thing I got a picture of!

Tour Day 38 10/20/11

Hello! We're currently in Florida, but I'm working on trying to catch up on these back posts. :)

For day 38, we were in Wisconsin.

We started out at a hotel where someone had set up an event for us to do a writing workshop. This hotel was connected to a casino, so you could sort of say we've spoken in a casino now, hehe. We were actually speaking in the meeting room next to it.

When we arrived, the hostess told us my dad would be giving a 3 hour writing class to the older kids 13 and up, and I would be giving a 3 hour writing class to 7 - 12 year olds.

My reaction was sort of like this: " . . . O.o . . . Okay." I had never given one of these writing workshops before, least of all to 7 - 12 year olds. We normally don't give the lessons to anyone younger than 11 because the concepts are complex, but I did it.

I taught those kids, and I hope they learned some things and enjoyed it. So that was my first time and probably not the last.

After that event we went to the Lighthouse book store and had a signing.

Once the signing was done we went over to a church where we had a pizza party. This bookstore and the patrons were awarded a party from us because they sold and purchased more copies of Song of the Ovulum during an event than any other store, so they got a party. :)

Tour Day 37 10-19-11

On the 19th we had a short homeschool group meeting in Indiana before heading to Green Bay, WI.


The drive was rather long. So. I took pictures. :)



On the way through Illinois, we drove through Chicago. Unfortunately, our GPS went on the fritz and it took us a long time to get out of there again.



Rather crowdy with wind speeds of 70MPH


We finally made it to Wisconsin after a long, hard drive.

Tour Day 36 - 10-18-11

Day 36 we spoke at a school and a homeschool group.


We first spoke at Anderson Christian School. I think we talked three times, but since it was awhile ago now, I don't quite remember! When you're on the road as much as we are, the days tend to run together. Sorry



Once done at Anderson we drove over to our next event and set up there.

Just one talk at this homeschool group, so only four for the day. Not too bad.




Book table. :)

Another 48 Hour Contest! - Winner!

The winner of the copy of Bones of Makaidos is:

'Brianna :D '


She signed her name with the smiley face. :) So I don't know her last name or anything.

Her guess was

10,755.92

The real mileage was

10745.7 miles

So she was off by only 10.22 miles. Good job, Brianna!

To claim your prize, email me at

amanda(at)daviscrossing(dot)com



You need to email me before 9:15PM 11/1/11 to claim your prize, or I will pick the next closest guess as the winner.

Tour Day 35 - 10-17-11

Day 35 was mostly spent driving to Indiana.


To reach Indiana from where we live in TN, we had to go through Kentucky (unless we wanted to go /around/ it, but that wouldn't make any sense. :) )



Nifty bridge


And finally, after many hours, Indiana


Once we reached Indiana we had a book talk in probably our most unusual location yet--a pediatric surgeon's building. We spoke in the waiting room (it was after hours).

And they had snacks

And a whole herd of cupcake dragons.

Would a group of dragons be called a herd? Or perhaps a flock.

I spoke first

And then my dad spoke


The surgeon who owns the place was gracious enough to let us stay at his house. :) All in all, a good day. The crowd was attentive and asked us questions. We like that.