Has it really been a month???

Ok, yes I know it's actually been a month, but there were adventures happening!

For those of you who aren't as interested in the reading and stuff just watch this explanation (thanks to WRappin and Wierd Al for this one)...



For those who are interested in reading...

Let's start with Lisa's stuff...
In the last month Lisa has done four presentations at two national conferences and was awarded a conference internship that covered most of the cost for the one that work wasn't paying for. Competition for the internships is actually pretty tough and at this point Lisa is the only person I'm aware of that got one on the first try!

Lisa is also officially in the data collection phase of her dissertation (she's running tests on people and recording the results) so she's well on her way to actually being DR Kidder!

Of course Patrick wasn't exactly just standing around guarding the walls...

Ok... so maybe I did guard the walls but I did other stuff too!

I went with Lisa to both of the conferences.

At the first one I discovered the old Mormon settlement that was the actual first building in Las Vegas. I also found components for a couple of new stories and finished the almost next to the last draft for Johnson farm. The next steps from here are to put it in the hands of my third group of pre-readers (which includes people who will hopefully be creating my cover art!) and doing the worky icky, make sure all the punctuation is correct, editing.

And of course this happened...

We brought back about 20 LBS of agate and petrified wood. (We also found the worlds largest agate sphere but I'm going to have to find the picture for that one...)

(Lisa found the picture, although there was some funky light reflections on her phone.)

The second trip was in Portland Oregon...

I brought this little pretty home...

I'll be turning this amethyst point into my version of the one that Jamie, one of the main female characters in my novel Johnson Farm, wears.

Speaking of Johnson Farm... NANOWRIMO started while we were in Oregon, so I didn't spend too much time roaming the city. I'm working on the second book of the Johnson Farm series with three more planned. Hopefully I'll be releasing one a year for the next five years. But for now it's get the first draft of book two done this month (27,000 words (about 114 pages) so far and about that much more to go...), and then get the first book out and on the market!

So, for all the nieces and nephews that bugged me about being in one of my books that one's coming too (about 70 pages done) but I needed to give it a rest to get this whole book in a month thing out of the way... hopefully you guys' book is out in 2018!

So, what have we learned from all this?
Lisa is a really smart competent person who gets things done.

And Patrick...?
Well, Patrick just has too many things he's trying to do. And...
You can not take that guy anywhere without rocks and stories being part of the adventure!

So, that's the short version...
We'll say more when Lisa feels like writing one; the second book is done; or I go completely insane (or is that completely insaner?)

For those of you who actually read this instead of watching the Albuquerque video...
Here's another one! (This is about the shape book two is in (which is why I'm not writing too much right here right now...))



Thanks guys, see you soon!

Ebb and Flow...

We made it back from the trip...

In case someone's not sure what we're talking about...

We had a cruise/reunion/birthday-party thing to go to... (We love you Grandma!)

When we left, our car was still at Honda. Given that at least one other car associated with the cruise/reunion/birthday-party was kind of totaled due to things related to one of the things they were tracking down in our car, and another had transmission issues... I think we're glad we gave Honda an extra week! So...the car gave the Honda guys fits (I blame the ninja squirrels) but we didn't break down in the desert... I'll call this a win.

We did have a good trip all around though it did remind us that some days it doesn't pay to leave home... When we got back Lisa discovered that her dissertation committee chair is leaving for another university so she has to reorganize her committee (again...). On the bright side she remains the most cited researcher in her department at the university. She met with some folks already and it looks like the dissertation timeline she has in mind will work out (which is good).

In my side of the writing game... Don't know yet... ask me next time I post.
I have a meeting with with some fairly serious publishing people on Wednesday about the novel that I hope to have out in December. I have the latest version of the pitch put together and hope to have the latest edit of the book completely on the computer by the end of the week...

I am also working on the copy for the first book of next year. I also hope to have at least one if not two videos for this one up by the next time I post (fun stuff). I'm not going to say specifically what the videos or the book are about just now but...
If you find the concept of ballistic fragmentation of non-crystalline solids to be interesting or scary check back in two weeks... (trust me I've already made one neighbor jealous playing with the stuff for this one...).

So we're back...
We're working on stuff...
We're taking the good with the bad...
Even though some days we'd rather be here...

Or here...

But in any case we'll be having fun,
getting things done,
and...

hanging out with the gang!

That's it for this time. If Lisa doesn't post next week, see you in two...

There and back again... again!

Last week Lisa told the tale of our trip to California. Normally we love going on trips and find them energizing and relaxing in interesting ways, but not that trip...

There were a lot of things going on and a lot to get done after we got home.

In the last week we officially got my first book of the year out (after having to explain to the publisher that captions actually need to be with the pictures and that the captions didn't have to be repeated more than once). I started writing text for my latest book project (due out in 2017). Lisa got chapter 1 of her dissertation to her advisor....

And then there were the things that weren't writing related. Two Sundays ago (the one before Mothers
Day) Lisa got her new choir director and got the choir to meet for the first time in our new ward (and the stake wants them to sing in stake conference next month...). I had a bunch of clerks office stuff to do including pushing to get my new membership clerk (who knows when that is going to happen...) and explaining to someone who really should have known better that as a clerk I do not in fact have the authority to perform marriages for the dead (talk about a looong story). And a whole series of other adventures better left to another time and place.

Somewhere in all of this I mentioned to Lisa that I didn't think the typical ward Mother's Day thing was going to be very good for either one of us at the moment. Lisa quickly found that with some club points we could get a really good price at a nice hotel in Salt Lake.

And then this happened...


Video courtesy of PandoricaGallifrey ...

In all seriousness we did get away for the weekend, and it really was what we needed. We got the relaxation and stress relief we didn't get on the last trip. Speaking of that stress relief...

I know it's a weird Mother's Day activity but we had a good time "bustin' caps" at a local shooting range. Lisa did pretty good for her first time with a pistol. No, the grouping on my target in the picture ain't the best, but considering it was a range gun not mine and this was my first clip with it... I'm not complaining. They got better after that.

Later in the day we went to a really good Brazilian steak house for a nice dinner.

I actually woke up both nights of the trip with ideas about the new book. So, Lisa kindly ignored a lot of rambling on my part...

So my tip to everyone is... If you really need to get a way for a day or two, find a way to do it once in a while...

It really helps.

Here are a few other lessons learned on this trip

1: Fancy hotel manager types get worried when they see a guy with crazy hair wandering into their hotel restaurant....

2: Those same managers get really embarrassed and defensive on the second day of the trip, when they come up to you in the hotel restaurant; see that you're writing in a notebook; and then read your t-shirt that says "Please don't annoy the writer he may put you in a book and kill you" (Thanks to Lisa's mom, Marisa, and company)... Yeah, the service got a lot better after that...

3: Lisa really prefers revolvers to semi automatics. Revolvers don't throw hot brass at you...

4: There is absolutely no point in me not taking a notebook into a restaurant... I only end up writing on the napkins!

Well, that's it for today...
Until next time...
Remember, your mind is your greatest weapon,
Keep it sharp and loaded!

Sidetracks

So many things were happening last week and the week before.  By the time we hit Wednesday, before the trip to California...well, I feel sorry for anyone who encountered us.  Our plates, minds, and emotions were definitely maxed out.

The trip was to attend Patrick's mom's memorial and a quick visit to my family.  My mom is still waiting to start chemo, but I still brought her some hats I made.

The trip began with big fat rain drops all the way down to Nephi.  At times the rain was so loud, I couldn't hear Patrick.  After a stop over in Mesquite and a nice breakfast buffet we headed across the Nevada-California desert.  Baker is the entrance to death valley, and on our first trip back to California we ended up leaving our car there.  So, needless to say we have a "Do not stop in Baker" rule.

So we drove through until we reached Barstow to have some lunch before we left I-15 to head towards Bakersfield.  After a nice lunch and refilling our sodas we were anxious to finish driving for the day.  Our car (or other forces) had other plans.  I could not bring myself to call the roadside assistance so Patrick had to do it for me.

While it took almost an hour to get a tow truck to us, the owner of Fast-Trac towing finally came and took us to his shop himself.  We had just decided to rent a car and let them fix ours over the weekend when Tony (the owner) comes racing back in from the garage and says "Cancel the rental car!  You are leaving here tonight in your own car."  While we did not like this little sidetrack on the way down, the down time was rather enjoyable and included a cockatoo that acted like a dog and imitated the cars outside.

After a nice service in Bakersfield and some enjoyable time with the Wilson cousins, we headed to El Segundo.  Upon arrival, I discovered that I had left my computer in Bakersfield.  Luckily we had exchanged numbers with George and Rich and after much texting confirming that the computer was indeed in Bakersfield, it worked out that Rich and Rob would bring it down as they were flying out of LAX.  While, I do have all my dissertation data, research, and writing backed up in the cloud, I was a bit of a mess until I had my computer back.  (THANK YOU RICH & ROB!!!!!)

We surprised Patrick with a pre-publishing party for the Chainmail Bottle Carrier book.  Just a small group of the El Segundo Laynes, 14 in total.  Madi and Wyatt made an awesome banner with fireworks!

Congratulations Patrick!

Mom and Marisa also made him a new writing shirt.  He does have some mayhem planned for several of his upcoming stories, so do be careful.

On our way back everything was going smoothly until we reached Payson.  We were both exhausted so we stopped in the Walmart parking lot and searched for hotels.  After getting dinner, we wonder if Patrick's blood sugar was low.  It was, however a much needed stop.

We did take advantage of the extra time and drove by the new Provo City Center Temple.  Having spent time in Provo attending BYU, the transformation was amazing.  One day we will go back and do a session there.  For this trip we took the time to go to the Mt. Timpanogas temple, adding to our list of temples. 

After a session in the Mt. Timpanogas Temple

And as a writer is never truly on vacation, I was able to grab a picture of my favorite writer at work (seeing as I had to wait anyways while those precious thoughts were noted in one of his notebooks).

Writing down thoughts in the Temple parking lot

And so we returned home after a quick trip, with several unexpected sidetracked moments.  The house was still intact, and the frig was quickly replenished.

And, while I have not been pulling my weight in posting, I do think I have a good reason.  Although I know that my mere 99 pages of a dissertation in progress do not come close to matching my favorite writer's page numbers.  But I think progress is happening - lots of red ink at the moment - just not on the first page :)

The current state of Lisa's dissertation.

Until next time, just keep swimming.

I finally get vacations...

I finally get vacations...

Thursday and Friday were the days for Lisa's conference in Boise so I went along and for two days (not counting parts of Wednesday and Saturday...) I was able to relax get away from this whole publishing and marketing end of the writer thing...

But maybe I don't...

When it comes to the actual writing part of being a writer I got more done on my two vacation days than I would in three days at "work"...

The writey wordy stuff...
As of today I'm back hard at it. I shoot the video for the Kickstarter tomorrow, I finished a short story that I started on the trip and I dug up a couple thousand pages of research for another book I've got in the works.

I am very much looking forward to the day that I can send the shirt and tie people part of writing (marketing and such) back to what ever _ _ ll it comes from and get back to just hardball writing (until the next one is ready to be shoved out the door and then I'm write back here (pun intended (Hey... I have to suffer, everybody suffers!)))

On other fronts Lisa is pushing closer and closer to proposing her dissertation. Then she gets to deal with the human subjects committee AKA "the murder board" (whether that's a statement about how I feel about them or what they do to projects is up for debate...). And then she can do the actual gather data part of the research...

Lisa is also gearing up for her double conference trip at the beginning of November.

I'm not going on that one because of costs and my NANOWRIMO project. That would be a novel of no less than 50,000 words in one month. Since I don't intentionally write on Sundays that would be 1923.08 words per day for a whole month... (remember that hardball writing I was talking about). And that's not counting blog posts, emails, or any of the other wordy stuff I have to do.

The shiny pretty stuff...

Writing isn't all that's going on...

The first shipment of stuff on my business account got here today. Now I have to build the stuff and figure out a better storage system (so I can keep the business shiny and the personal shiny separate better...). Some of this is for things for the ETSY store we're opening and some is for the Kickstarter (more about that in a week or so...)

This also happened...

We broke down and bought the half a hog bundle as part of a local grocery stores case lot sale... 50 pounds of pork... How much meat to we have? I have no idea I lost count around 45 meals... (and that's not counting the pork stock we will be making with the bones...)

Woodn't you know (pun intended again...)

Naturally we stopped at one of our usual rock connections in Boise...

And part of Arizona came home with us... Apparently the tumbler is going to be back in operation soon...

And of course Lisa got into the act...

With a nice little piece of jade.

The biggest over all piece is mine (and onyx)...

But that's because I have a plan for it that involves making something for Lisa (to be seen later).

Annnd we'll end where we began...

With petrified wood... and me wondering whether I get this vacation thing or not...

That's it for today. Till next time...
Life is like a box of chocolates...
You'd have a pretty good idea what your going to get if you'd only read!

Sean 27:56 For Mine is a Life Full of Miracles

Nope, no videos or shiny things in this one (ok lots of shiny things but that's not the point). On this one occasion I am actually quite serious. My life is a life full of miracles.

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!

And so once again...

And so once again I have ridden through the desert on my horse with no name (Ok... this time it was a rental... and Lisa handled the driving part)...

Once again I have reason to be cocky...
As some folks know we took a trip out to Cali to see family. Sadly one of the reasons for the trip was my mom is not doing so well and we really needed to visit her. On the happier side Lisa got to spend some time with her family. My plans during this part of the trip were to eat guacamole, write, and drink soda until I mutated into a Minotaur... well sadly... no Minotaur... But the eating guacamole and writing went really well. Figure for the size and line count of the notebook I was using I should have gotten about 25 pages done on the trip. The actual score was closer to 60. I got no less than three good story ideas on the trip (with one over 50% complete...) and have made progress on the two non fiction items I want out by the end of the year; the rough draft of the one was completed just before we left and the the other is just waiting for cover art and printing. We brought a copy of a book Lisa is published in on the trip with us (an actual hard cover copy of the book. Not even a galley, an actual production copy! (congratulations Lisa)).

Lisa's sister Marisa read a teaser story for the novella (anticipating the teaser will be up on WMS before Thanksgiving. The novella will be out next year (under the current plan)). And Lisa's committee has given her verbal and email OK to propose (but she does wonder why she has to route a physical piece of paper around to get signatures for an online program).

Now, none of that has given the reason I have to be cocky (Ok... Author who will be published this year married to a published author who will be a Doctor next year... got to give myself that one...). The big reason I'm cocky is I made it through a long, stressful trip without using a single drop of insulin and with my highest blood sugar reading being a 143 (normal range is 80-120 they won't  even really use the word diabetic until 130 or 140...). So getting through the trip with numbers that low was really good. But they aren't all good days...

And once again... there's drama...
Lisa almost didn't want to go to work last Thursday. It turns out is was kind of a premonition. Somebody (and I can't even blame one of her coworkers because it was on another floor) managed to flood a bathroom on a floor above the ITRC, so they had work crews trying to clean up a flood right across from her office. It was pretty major in that they ripped up the base board from a fairly large area and stripped the insulation out of a room across the hall. As of this afternoon the the drying fans are still going. The worst part is that the @#$@#$@#!!! people they sent to do the work the first day were too dense to realize there were people trying to work in the offices around them, so they were noisy and rude.

Once again there are things on the horizon... Lisa will be heading off to not one but two conferences in the near future (I'm not going (trying to get work done). So, if the city burns down while she's gone... )). We're both up to our eyeballs in writing, research, organizing and trying to edumafy people. But, those are items for future posts...

Once again... I get to say "But wait! There's more!"
Once again... I get to put up a video!



Once again... Information Society (One of my favorite bands from the late eighties / early nineties) has released  new album.

Actually the album was released last year and I missed it... which is weird...
What is weirder, is that parts of the album actually fit with my novella which was started last year... before the album was released... There will be more about this and how the album relates in future posts here and at WMS...

And once again...that's it for this week...
Until next time... Forget Minotaur! Next year, one of Davy Jones' pirates from Pirates of Caribbean!

Running Away...

So, after some very crazy weeks, and the upcoming end of the semester, we needed a break.  (I think we also get antsy as spring comes around.  The uncertainty of the weather in the winter makes traveling a bit more anxiety producing.)

So, from our travels we brought back...

• German chocolate
• French pastries
• Chinese sauces and mixes
• A baseball grenade (empty)
• Some zippers
• Pre-polish grit for the tumbler
• Some rocks - just two little ones for Lisa's office collection
• Little boxes
• New pants for Patrick

I find it great that we can travel 2 1/2 hours away and have such an international experience!

We did skip the Brazilian BBQ and the Belgian frites and waffles this time around, but the point was to step away from work and re-orient ourselves.  The German deli  - Seigfreid's Deli - had priorities this time around, and we did breakfast at Les Madeleines.  I had the best English muffin ever! Homemade really does make a difference.  We, of course, brought home some of the pastries - you just can't get enough of the good stuff here!

We ended up in a great little hotel suite, with a good bed - which helped us both to sleep better than either of us had for a while.

With a lazy Friday, semi-wandering around Salt Lake it gave us much needed time to talk.  Although, work - both teaching and writing filtered into the conversation, that is nothing unusual for us.  At dinner Thursday night, we think the table next to us changed their conversation as an attempt to counter our pretty heady and theoretical conversation.

Throughout the weekend we discussed the lesson I taught on Sunday, (which I think went really well) a talk from the October General Conference by Sister Carol F. McConkie entitled Live according to the Words of the Prophets.  I love that we can talk about everything - especially scripture and gospel topics.

Next spring we are going to plan to go to the Winter Solstice Writing Retreat (See Solstice Writer Retreat Blog and High Valley Arts Website).

Sorry, no pictures this week, perhaps next week.