Without a Trace Won an Award

Like any project worth doing, Without a Trace was made possible only by the efforts of dozens of selfless people. One of them is my talented, dry-humored, red-haired brother-in-law, Nathaniel Navratil. The moment he heard that I was trudging my way through (I mean writing) my first book, he offered to lend his talents to design it, inside and out. Having seen his work win countless awards, I said very little about what I envisioned for a cover or chapter pages. I wanted to leave room for his creativity to do its thing. And it did.

Last week, Nathaniel won a Silver ADDY Award for Without a Trace’s design. The ADDYs are a program of the American Advertising Federation and the world's largest advertising competition. Nathaniel said the studio-quality photos Trevor Woods took of Sierra Phantom gave him the tools and inspiration he needed to create an eye-catching design. As I told both Nathaniel and Trevor when I first saw the design, “Dang… I hope people judge this book by its cover.”