A Gift Beyond The Season

Several years ago, I was the acquisitions editor at Cook Communications (now rebranding as David C. Cook) when the company acquired hundreds of book titles from Eagle Communications including the books from Honor Books. One of those many books was a beautifully packaged novel from Jim Stovall called The Ultimate Gift. If you look at Jim’s site, one of the things you will be hard pressed to learn is that Jim is visually impaired.

Tom Bosley approached me as the acquisitions editor about our publishing house producing an audio version of the novel. I listened to the entire audio CD as I commuted back and forth to work. The story is remarkable and I attempted to move this effort ahead but found little interest in audio from the key players in the publishing house. Almost everyone in a decision making position has changed from those days but from Jim Stovall’s site, it looks like they found a way to produce the audio version of The Ultimate Gift. I was pleased to see that Tom Bosley or someone didn’t take the rejection as the final word but continued pressing ahead to bring the audio product into existence. It’s a lesson many of us should learn as writers.

A week or so ago, my wife and I were wandering around in Blockbuster looking at new releases and spotted the movie version of The Ultimate Gift. The storyline stirred great memories for me and I picked it up and brought it home. What a terrific story and especially a good one to watch during this Christmas season. I recommend it.

For a taste of the movie, check out this YouTube version of the trailer:

Finally, in the spirit of the season, check out this Audio Postcard which I created yesterday and download the gift and listen to the teleseminar.