Bodes Well

As a great personal favor to me, my publisher will be releasing The Book that Proves Time Travel Happens on my daughter’s twenty-ninth birthday, April 14, 2015. They had to bump two James Patterson books to other dates (meaning some days in 2015 will see the release of four Patterson books) and cancel a J. K. Rowling (one that she wrote under the pseudonym James Patterson) but Little, Brown Young Readers went to the trouble to rearrange its calendar to make the April 14th release date possible, and I’m grateful.

April 14th is an auspicious day.

As my daughter is always quick to remind me, April 14th is the day Lincoln was shot, and the day the Titanic struck the iceberg. But, as I always remind her, Lincoln died on the 15th, and the Titanic sank on the 15th, so the 14th really isn’t all that bad. It’s just a day when trouble tends to get started.

April 14th is also the day the Donner Party departed Springfield, Illinois, bound for California with an insufficient number of picnic baskets.

So all in all, April 14th is the perfect day for the debut of one of my books.

(It’s certainly a great day to celebrate the birth of my beautiful daughter.)    

April 14, 1912: As the result of meddling time-travelers changing the course of history, John Wilkes Booth shoots the Titanic.

I time travel back to April 14, 1846, to catch the Donner Party as they depart Springfield, Illinois, in the hopes of providing them with a few additional well-stocked picnic baskets, but they take I-72 and I miss them.