Best-selling novelist Richard Paul Evans of "Christmas Box" fame is just one of the numerous authors and poets appearing at the inaugural Missouri Literary Festival, Oct.2-4 at Hammons Field and the Creamery Arts Center. KSMU's Randy Stewart spoke with him by phone recently.

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At the Missouri Literary Festival, Richard Evans says he'll talk about "writing, the power of books," and about his newest book in his "Christmas" series, "The Christmas List," which hits stores October 6, three days after the festival. He's a bit disappointed his appearance in Springfield misses the new book's in-store date by a couple of days, but the publicity will almost certainly help!
Asked how he got to this point--from being an advertising executive and producer of clay animation commercials, to a best-selling author whose first book, "The Christmas Box," so far has 8 million copies in print, Evans explains that in 1993, he had finished a couple of big ad campaigns and had time on his hands. Since it was around Christmas time, he felt inspired to write a Christmas story as a family gift. Soon friends heard about it, and Evans took his manuscript to a local Kinko's and printed up 20 copies... which then got passed around from person to person, among family members and colleagues at work. Within three weeks of printing up the original 20 copies, Evans says "they'd been shared and read more than 160 times!" Then bookstores started calling, trying to order copies of the book; soon thereafter a publisher contacted him, and "The Christmas Box" took on a life of its own. "That was more than 8 million books ago," says Evans. It sat atop the New York Times Bestsellers lists, hardback and paperback simultaneously, and was made into an Emmy-winning CBS TV movie.
Evans' new book "The Christmas List" is his 14th novel--now, by no means are all of them in the Christmas genre, says Evans. "I actually left the Christmas genre because I didn't want to be typecast... and then a lot of other authors--Pulitzer Prize winners, best-selling authors, came into the genre--EVERYBODY tried their hand at a Christmas book! After about 10 years I decided, 'you know, I LIKE writing Christmas stories!" So he returned to the genre. "And my sales just exploded again. So it's like I have a second career."
"The Christmas Box" was a trilogy. After that Evans wrote "The Locket" and started a few other series. Four years ago he re-entered the Christmas genre with "Finding Noel." But he says the new one, "Christmas List," "is probably my most BLATANT Christmas story since 'The Christmas Box.'"
Evans also founded a charitable organization called "Christmas Box House International." After he and his wife Carrie received their first "mega-check" from his publisher, "we just sat there and stared at it--what do you do with (that much money)?!" Evans calls being a "dad and a good husband" his "number one job," and he immediately began wondering how his new-found wealth would affect his family. He already felt they were "doing okay" economically--"things were good." But this was more money than he and his wife quite knew what to do with. So they had what they now call "The Minivan Talk"--a serious heart-to-heart talk while sitting in their minivan in the parking lot of a financial advisor they had just visited. This advisor had just scared the daylights out of them with talk of setting up a trust fund in case "your kids become drug addicts or alcoholics! At that point my wife actually said to me, 'Let's give all the money BACK!!' Which says a lot about Carrie--but also says a lot about ME, because I said 'Whoa! Just a second here!'
Evans says that "at the time my parents were struggling--I'd been raised in a poor family. Now, all things considered, I'd rather have money than not, so we decided we would start a charity. And it has become a magnificent obsession. We started building shelters for abused and neglected children"--several in the state of Utah. "We've housed more than 20,000 abused children." And now they've started what they call the "Christmas Box Initiative" with a goal of providing "every foster youth in America who's aging out of the system a 'Life Start Kit,' and eventually have mentors attached to them, to give these kids a good start once they get out into the world. Because if we can catch them at that time, we can reverse these horrible trends of prison and early pregnancy and drug abuse and poverty and suicide. If we can set them on a good course they can go on to be productive, law-abiding citizens." They are currently providing Life Start Kits to young people in six states. For more information visit www.richardpaulevans.com. "Send me an email, and I'll sic our people on you!"

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