Award-winning, critically acclaimed novelist Ray Blackston offers A Delirious Summer as the highly anticipated sequel to his popular novel, Flabbergasted. The new book (0-8007-5958-3, $12.99, paperback) releases May 1, 2004 from Revell.
Blackston released Flabbergasted, his first-ever novel, to widespread critical and commercial acclaim. Respected publications from BookPage and Library Journal to CCM and Christian Single to Southern Living and The Greenville News, as well as tens of thousands of readers, praised the novel. The Dallas Morning News voted it as their top inspirational book of 2003, saying in December, “Amazing. A novel with no illicit sex, bad words, racial slurs, or crime that is simultaneously serious, hilarious, and impossible to put down.”
Launching with that momentum, A Delirious Summer picks up where Flabbergasted left off. Billed as an entertaining “beach read” full of quirky characters looking for love in all the wrong places, Blackston hilariously develops characters introduced in the first book, as well as the new narrator, Neil Rucker. Neil, a seven-month’s dateless Spanish language teacher to missionaries in Ecuador, is looking for romance during his furlough, only to discover the church-hopping girls of Greenville, SC are “more elusive than a snowflake in the Ecuadorian jungle.” Neil tries to find the perfect girl among the Neapolitan choices: Lydia, a demanding redhead, Darcy, a joyriding picture-perfect blonde, and Alexis, a very tardy but intriguing girl with raven hair and a pierced eyebrow. The novel also boasts more convertibles, beach music and even a little Elvis.
“Ray Blackston has done a fabulous job with this story,” says Twila Bennett, Revell’s marketing manager. “Fans of Flabbergasted and readers of contemporary fiction will find lots to love in this beach read. As retailers quickly embraced Flabbergasted as a core fiction book for them last year, the response to A Delirious Summer has been overwhelming.”
Hailing from Greenville, SC, which also serves as a setting for his books, Ray Blackston worked as a buyer and a broker for eleven years before cashing in his modest 401K and leaving his corporate cubicle to write full time. Humorous now in hindsight, but before signing with Revell, he had been turned down by every publisher he approached with his first book, each saying that “no one would want to read a book about singles and their volatile dynamics.” Now with thousands of books sold, Blackston continues to serve on the mission committee of Grace Church and coaches his seven-year-old nephew in T-ball. He has traveled to rural Ecuador on a summer mission program.
More information on Ray Blackston and A Delirious Summer can be found at www.rayblackston.com.
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