One of them is my wife... Lisa... you might have met her...
I can brag about her later, let me tell you about a few of the other miracles that have been happening lately...
Umm... first off the book (one of them) is done and if things go anywhere near right it will be out this year.
Note that that is this year, not next month... As one might expect the print date has slipped some (Who knew that writing the book was the easy part...). Part of the reason the schedule slipped is that Lisa and I decided that the book could use some testing before it's full release (so I will be looking for a few brave volunteers to see if the instructions make sense (we learn as time goes on...)). So rather than launching the book next month I'm launching a Kickstarter to fund the tests. The book will go into a limited test release in December and the fully re-edited book will be out in April (somehow sending the final copy to the printers on April Fools Day just makes sense...).
Now then... earlier this year I did end up going to the hospital, which was not all that fun. The fact that I lived and am actually off insulin (and so quickly...) is a miracle. Add to that that the book whose cover you just looked at and two more in the top five on my production schedule are direct results of that trip... A slight change in direction for some of the writing stuff, but one that has cemented that yes, I am a professional writer. This whole mess fits into the Life Changing Miracle category.
Follow the bouncing banking for this one...
Last year Lisa and I were going to go on a conference trip and I was worried about funding for it. I did some digging and found some old money the state of California was holding from when I was an undergrad and put in the paperwork to get it... Lisa and I never went on the trip and the money would have taken too long to get here anyway. It wasn't a lot of money, but after it got here and I paid tithing we split the remainder three ways: $68 to Lisa for some knitting stuff; $68 to me for some chainmaille stuff; and $68 that got put into the bank for a latter project...
The chainmaille order is the one that most of the materials for the originals of the designs in the book came from. As for the $68 I put in savings it was mixed with a little more money in savings and waited.
This last week I needed to open the new account for the Kickstarter and publishing stuff (my own business and easier to track if it has it's own account). With the money in savings I still needed $26.00 to open the account. I didn't want to use our regular income for this because it was a special project of it's own and I wanted it to be something I worked specifically for and found a way to do, so...
I dug around and found an old cash of change that I had but it still wasn't quite enough. I cashed in the aluminum cans I had on hand and got some cash. I was bummed and thought I didn't quite have enough till I counted everything together...
After taking out tithing on the cans I had enough to open the account with $1.68 left over! So, I was able to open the new account for the new business without having to dip into paychecks and regular house funds to do it. Sure, I could have just slid a hundred over from the house checking account but I didn't want to do that, both because I didn't want to pull extra money away when Lisa's getting ready for her double conference gig, and this version has a way better story! And yes I do feel I was blessed to be able to do it. But wait there's more!
Today I made my first supplies order from the new account, some stuff for the Kickstarter and promotion of the book. The total $68.26!
So the money from long before we were married, that I was willing to give up for Lisa's trip (and I still gave a way part of it to her...). Actually helped with this book. Not once, but three times... And it was money I'd forgotten I'd had for the last 12 years... Don't care what anyone else says, MIRACLE. If it had not been for that forgotten money and the failed trip (and the whole hospital/not dying/insulin thing) this book never would have happened.
One more related miracle...
Working on the marketing and business side of the book is stressful and that's no lie... (somewhere in our stake there are a couple of people walking around headless for bugging me while I've been trying to get the publishing and Kickstarter nailed down...). Just when I want to get out of here but it looks like it's not going to happen... Lisa gets a chance to go to a two day conference in Boise and because work asked her to go, it's covered and doesn't mess with the double conference!
As usual, no more info on that one till it happens (other than the fact that somewhere between here and NANOWRIMO in November I'm going to get two days of just straight up fiction writing in (no marketing, statistical analyses or other "shirt and tie people stuff").
Summing it all up...
Miracles can and do happen. But, sometimes you have to take the effort to make yourself worthy to receive them and to put yourself in the right place to receive them. Sure there are the ones that happen without your help... but a lot of the time it's preparing and asking (and knowing what to ask for). The miracles can and will happen, you just have to be ready...
That's it for this post
Until next time... if the miracles aren't happening, make 'em yourself!
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