With our hardbound stock dwindling toward extinction (only 20 or so copies left), Apple’s new book ebook software could not have come at a better time.

Grazing Across Texas has enjoyed a substantial hardbound life through multiple press runs, but last month we made the tough decision not to reprint. It’s a big book that’s expensive to produce in any quantity that makes sense in today’s bookselling market. We’ve been pondering the idea of extending its life in digital form, but until recently none of the established platforms made sense for a 350-page coffee table book that’s rich in calories and photography. 

Enter the Apple iBooks-2 system that’s geared toward textbooks, cookbooks, and other multimedia content. For the past few weeks I’ve been rebuilding Grazing Across Texas with all of the recipes, historical commentary, and photography intact. It’s been a tedious but fun process, and I think you’ll be blown away by the finished product. I haven’t established a final digital price, at this point, but it will be a fraction of the original $60 hardbound tag. 

So if you’re a game/fish chef with an iPad, you’ll soon have an option for perusing, cooking, and consuming some seriously good vittles from 40 of the top chefs, ranches and outfitters in Texas. 

Muy sabrosas!

Pete McDonald and I will have pens in hand all day on Friday and Saturday. You can find us in or near The Angling Bookstore booth. If we’re out wandering the floor, flogging the casting pool, or standing in line for a show dog, you can text me at (512) 347-8336 and we’ll dash back and sign your book. 

On Saturday we’ll have a group signing at the Author’s Table at 1:30 PM. There we’ll be joined by Bob Popovics, The Becks, Dave Skok and whichever additional Blitz contributors we can corral. That’ll be an opportunity to get your book inked up by a bunch of cool people, plus me and Pete.

So come on out and join us. It’s too dang cold to fish and the NFL has the week off.

The Fly Fishing Show
January 27-29, 2012
Garden Stave Convention Center
Somerset New Jersey 

 
For all of you North Americans that are off the shipping grid, and folks in the UK that aren’t going to pay “25 bloody pounds for overseas shipping”, your wait to read Martin Donovan’s Keeper is now over. 

Of course, you’ll have to own a Kindle or an iPad or a Nook or a smarty phone, but those are wondrous devices that’ll allow you thumb your nose at the postman from this day forward. 

eBook: $9.99

Buy from Amazon
Buy from Amazon UK
Buy from Apple iBooks
Buy from Barnes & Noble

In addition to scooping fish into the net, all the while eschewing wealth and liver health, the best guides we know are great storytellers. Stodgy Brits in too much tweed this is not. Donovan’s memoir of life on the River Test gives us a new appreciation for ghillies, Guinness, Marmite sandwiches, and valuable translations to keep the toffs and tossers at bay.  - The Drake

These two saltwater classics by Jeffrey Cardenas were originally published by Meadow Run Press and sold through multiple hardbound editions before eventually lapsing from print. There are a few of those original copies still for sale in the secondary market, but they’ll cost you more camels and guineas than you may want to spend on a book, even a really cool fishing book.

Through the marvel of modern technology, however, we’ve partnered with Jeffrey to dust off these two fine books and deliver them to the (digital) masses.

Marquesa
A Time & Place With Fish

On August 1, 1994, Jeffrey Cardenas boarded a homemade houseboat and puttered out of Key West harbor toward a cluster of islands on the distant horizon.

The Marquesas rest near the western terminus of The Florida Keys where two great oceans meet in a swirl of perpetual current. Jeffrey’s plan was to spend a full cycle of the summer moon, alone, in this remote and idyllic atoll where he once made a living guiding fly casters for tarpon, permit, and bonefish.

With meager provisions, a library of books, a skiff, and his fly rods, Jeffrey immersed himself, literally, in a warm and salty realm where the vertical span between the seafloor and high ground is measured in inches. His daily ritual was determined by the tides. He fished, he read, he observed, and he wrote.

With an angler’s instinct and the eye of a naturalist, Cardenas returned to Key West after his six-week sabbatical and completed one of the definitive literary works of that era. If you have an affinity for saltwater fly fishing, Marquesa will change the way you observe and value the fish, birds, and marine life of our coastal flats and estuaries.

eBook $9.99 

Buy from Amazon.com*
Buy from Barnes & Noble 

*Note: iPad users can purchase and download this book from Amazon by installing the free Kindle App on their device.

Sea Level
Adventures of a Saltwater Angler

From Montauk to the Yucatan and beyond, Jeffrey Cardenas, acclaimed author of Marquesa, takes us on a far-flung journey of angling discovery.

There are tactical passages in this book gleaned from Jeffrey’s many years of guiding in the Florida Keys, but he mainly serves as a passionate and acute narrator, angler, and observer.

He writes about the first 30 seconds of a tarpon hookup, well-endowed redfish in Cajun country, and pelagic marauders capable of burning a half-mile of backing off a fly reel. Along the way he details the intricate relationship between angler, guide, and fish–and he introduces us to a disparate cast of watermen: fly fishing legends, starving Cuban netters, a tuna captain named “Creature”, and a few longtime fishing buddies who molded and influenced Jeffrey’s perspective of the flats, oceans, and fishes.  

For the die-hard salt caster or the beginner looking for that first adrenaline-stoked hookup, Sea Level offers a stirring view of the world’s inshore/offshore gamefish and the impassioned sports who pursue them.

eBook $9.99 

Buy from Amazon.com*
Buy from Barnes & Noble 

*Note: iPad users can purchase and download this book from Amazon by installing the free Kindle App on their device.

Randomly pulled from our mailing list, and certified by non partial witnesses, the winner of the 2011 Christmas Give-away, and a shiny new TFO BVK fly rod is:

Michael Willis
Pearland, Texas

Congrats, Michael, and thanks to everyone for playing. If you’re on our mailing list, you’re already registered for our March drawing. 

We just signed a contract that will revive two saltwater fly-fishing classics and bring them into the modern realm. If you haven’t yet asked Santa for a Kindle or an iPad, now would be a good time to amend your wish list. 

Stay tuned; details will follow.

Yep, it’s coming.

By Thursday evening you’ll be packed to the gills with yard gobbler and trimmings and the discussion over dishes will turn to…[burp]…Christmas shopping.

Black Friday, crowded stores, surly mall Santas, kids rubbing gooey viruses on escalator handrails…

Besides another day with vacuous relatives, what could be more dreadful than a trip to a crowded, over-decorated shrine of retail gluttony?

If you’re looking forward to lounging about with your belt on its last notch and your arteries sludged with lumpy brown gravy, we’ve got the perfect excuse for you to opt out and languor on the couch while everyone else battles the mall crowd. 

Announcing:

The sit around on your turkey-stuffed butt

FREE SHIPPING SALE!

 Here’s how it works:

1. Roust yourself from that L-tryptophan coma and go here. 
2. Find a really cool book (or three) for everyone on your shopping list
3. Buy them online while snarfing leftovers and watching football
4. Save some serious coin
5. Laugh hysterically at the lady on TV who’ll get jail time for donkey punching a Walmart greeter
6. Wait for UPS to deliver your underpriced loot
7. Sale ends at midnight on December 1st.
8. Sorry, we can’t ship to like Fiji, for free, so US domestic orders only

Happy Thanksgiving from all your friends and authors here at Departure Publishing!

Do you know this man?

Starting this week we’ll be giving away copies of Christine Warren’s PADDLEFISH to those well-versed in Texas trivia (or those really fast with Google). 

In addition to the race and the rivers, Christine did an applaudable job weaving nuggets of history and Texana into her narrative. 

So brush up on your Texas fun facts and tune into our Facebook page each morning at 9am CST. 

WINNING!

This summer, however, I found myself juggling three new book projects at once. I didn’t plan it that way; I fully intended for those books to launch with adequate spacing, but that’s not the way it worked out. In the process I got grumpy and tired and my computer desktop became permanently burned into my retinas. My bucket ranneth over. 

But now I’m happy to announce that as of today, Sunday October 16th, the review copies have all been mailed, ad space has been purchased, vendors have been paid, the website has been updated, and the cash registers are ringing.

The veritable hay is in the proverbial barn so, dangit, I’m going fishing. 

By the time you read this I’ll be up in the north woods throwing possum-sized flies at fish that look like dinosaurs. My wonderful assistant (wife) will be here to take your book orders, and in four days I shall return home with stirring tales of piscine heroics and a newfound resolve to sell every book in stock, and maybe acquire another one.

Northward…

Or a big closet, or a climate controlled dog kennel?

Anybody got a cozy, seldom-used corner of their living room where we can stash a bigass small pile of books?

A butler’s pantry?

A nook?

Just kidding. We’re good. We’ve got plenty of room as long as we sell most of these by the weekend. 

Paddlefish is here and we are motivated sellers!

Christine already has like a jillion readings and book signings on the calendar. Galleys and review copies have been mailed. And we’re hoping for quite a buzz leading up to the 50th running of the Texas Water Safari on June 9, 2012.

If you’ve ever wondered why someone would shuck their comfies and sign up for a 260-mile canoe race during the heat of a Texas summer, then by all means buy this book. Christine may not provide all of the answers, but you’ll darn sure laugh and cheer about what she’s learned, to date.

Here’s a little video teaser from our roving videographer, Tim Cole. Word has it that he’ll be releasing a full-length Texas Water Safari docu-drama sometime later this spring.