Merry Christmas... is it really Christmas?

Have you ever had one of those days where you get working on something and then you look up and it's a couple hours later than you thought?

Yeah... that was the last six weeks...

Lisa has been running subjects for her dissertation and teaching (a lot....). So, she's been busy.

Meanwhile...

I have finally finished the first draft for the second book  (got that?) in the Johnson Farm series (just over 290 pages (71,304 words)). In this book our young hero gets ordained in the church, discovers people aren't always what they seem, and discovers precisely why you never get in between two fourteen year old girls who are angry at each other and carrying weapons (even pretend ones)😨😨😱.

Lisa is still hoping to defend her dissertation this spring, which means she needs to get her whole document written by mid March 😅.

Hopefully in about the same time frame I'm releasing the first Johnson Farm book for sale (Tune in in the coming month or so to find out how to get some cool book launch related swag😎).

In other news Lisa's music folks are doing a significant part of the Sacrament meeting this Sunday (Christmas). So she's working hard on that too...

Now that NANOWRIMO is done for this year and the first draft is in the can I'll be more regular on doing blog posts again (and Lisa will do some too when she gets the time). So, stay tuned for cool shiny things (including some that you can own), school news, book stuff, and other adventures that are sure to come in the next year!

That's it for this one...
There are books to write and things to do.
Merry Christmas everyone!

And for those wondering how we're going to get all this done...

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!

The big push...

Well, in our last post Lisa talked about her dissertation. She's collecting data now. Not as fast as she'd like but it's happening. She's also gearing up for two conferences and trying to plan a family reunion. So, she's busy. And I'm not exactly going slow either.

I'm pushing the release date for Johnson Farm back to late winter / early spring. It will be better for marketing. I'm still planning on having the book ready to go by the end of the year, I just want a better slot for marketing it. The current plan is to get the main editing finished by November 1. Then I will be writing the sequel as a NANOWRIMO project before finishing the final edits in December. The book is really coming together. It's actually gotten positive reviews in the second round of people reading it (which is kind of important because this is the first time I've let a teenager get her hands on it, and it's a YA book). So stay tuned to find out how you can get your hands on a copy (I'm going to be offering signed books and some other swag when the book comes out...

I mentioned I'm doing the sequel next month. I'm also putting together a proposal for a personal finance book which will be my early 2017 new writing project (I'll also be editing the second novel and working on the zombies book). So, hope fully two out next year and maybe three in 2018 it's going to take a lot of work, but people are realizing I'm happier and easier to deal with if I'm writing (so people are starting to learn to leave me alone and let me write!).

All in all it seems like we're never quite at rest, but it's a good thing... progress is happening.

That's about it for this one...

Until next time I'll leave you with this thought of what the novel process is like (thanks to Learningelvish)



If you're not sure how this applies to writing a novel, try writing one this November... You'll find out!