Transistions

Each week it feels like a little bit more of the dissertation stress melts away.  This is a good thing, although I'm still working through the transition.

While we always have fun creative projects on the list, I'm finally in a place to get some of them done!  And look at potential employment opportunities, think about getting the house ready to sell, wondering where we will end up...AND forcing myself to not get overwhelmed and enjoy the next downshift from doctoral candidate stress.

So, here are some of the fun creative things that have been going on in our house....

First....

Forever Mountain Publishing has inventory!!!!!

This is a box of Patrick's novel Johnson Farm.  It has been available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble as an ebook, but the paperbacks are actually here!!!

After the armed forces were put away...

...an aircraft carrier took their place.

Since dissertation is done...

...that means more time for knitting...














...which means more yarn!

And some creative endeavors are still related to work...

...like that would really stop.

Lastly...

Overhead in the Kidder house...

{Giggles}

What are you up to?

I just catapulted a fairy.

Why did you do that?

Look how far she went!  She wanted to fly!  See, doesn't she look like she wants to fly?

The way her legs are positioned, I think she wants to dance.

(I'm not saying who said/did what...)

The real reason Lisa prefers I go to conferences with her...

Yeah... We're going to get to what's in the title... But first...

Yesterday was the re-dedication of the Idaho Falls temple. We attended the first session via the broadcast to our stake center (and we were grateful for not having to deal with two and a half hours of meetings before church and choir practice after...). It was good, and we're glad to have the temple open again!

Lisa is working on developing articles from her dissertation and teaching (again). She's also got some interesting knitting projects going on and just went to a conference (which she can talk about if she wants to...)

Over on my side of the office I'm editing Going Home the Hard Way, a follow on novel to Johnson Farm.

And by the way...

The proof  for the novel is in and the production run started this morning... I should have actual books available late next week (No you can't have the first one... That one is staying on my shelf...)

Hard Way is going well. There is a lot of work going on with it, but I think that in the end the story will be stronger than the first one. Some of the subject matter is definitely proving more challenging to write...

Speaking of challenging...

There will be a third book in the series which technically is happening in parallel with the first two. This one will be the biggest challenge yet and is one of the reasons Hard Way is taking longer to write. As I've said it's a parallel story to Johnson Farm and Hard Way, which means I need to make sure things match up at some points. But that's not the hard part...

Johnson Farm and Hard Way are told from the point of view of a 14 year old boy. The third book, which currently has the working title of Jamie's Story (but that may not be the final title), has two point of view characters. That's still not the hard part...

One of the two points of view is that of Jamie, a 14 year old girl... This is going to make things really complicated. I've done the 14 year old boy thing (some people say I'm still doing the 14 year old boy thing...), but I've never been a 14 year old girl (or any kind of girl for that matter!). This means I've been doing a lot of thinking about how to write this.

One of the steps I've taken is calling in a little help to get me in the right mindset. I've had the daughter of a friend of ours do a little decorating on the notebooks I intend to use for notes and the actual writing of Jamie's part of the story...

Funny thing number one: This is the only blue one I gave her to work on... I never told her I was using blue for notes...

Nothing weird here. This one just fits the subject matter...

Funny thing number two: The footprints actually make sense with a couple things that happen in Johnson Farm... Again I never told her about them and she hasn't read the book yet... (And you're going to have to read it if you want to know what I'm talking about...)

 Again nothing weird here... Just a pretty flower (and you'll have to read all three books to disprove that...)

Once again a young artist does an extraordinary job for one of the books. This time it's something to help me write the book instead of a finisher, but it's still great and much appreciated.

Ok... So... What does any of this have to do with the title?

Well, I did say some people still think I'm a 14 year old boy at heart...

Well, I mentioned Lisa went to a conference (I had work that needed to be done here so I didn't go... )

Well, you may remember these guys from last post...

Well... They kind of did a little construction while Lisa was gone...

Yeah... I was busy even when I wasn't working...

The whole thing has been taken down now, but it would be feasible to do it again (and possibly better!). Of course I'm not planing on doing so (yeah... and I'm not building an aircraft carrier on the table instead...)

That's it for now. See you next post.

Postgrad Paradise?

Well, Lisa is getting de-stressed from the whole PhD program. It's quite a process as she has been working full time and going to school for several years...

This means she's doing a lot of knitting (as well as working, and teaching, and music for church, and...). But, you know Lisa... She finishes one project and starts another.

And that means..

That's right!!!

Miniature siege artillery!!! (Seriously we built these as part of family home evening last night...

Over on his side of the house Editor in Chief (or was that Lord High Executioner?) Patrick's second book - Johnson Farm is officially on the market as an E-book! The physical edition is at the printer as we speak, so those copies are likely to start cropping up soon...

The next novel is Going Home the Hard Way. It's probably coming out next year (there's a smaller book in the works for the fall and another big book project in the works too).

In the mean time we also both survived birthdays, and had a good time doing it...

The knife in the center has an obsidian blade and those are Idaho opals in the handle. We picked it up in Spencer, Idaho on an opal hunting trip (there are other opals but we want somebody who's a little more of an opal specialist to work on them...).

The little soldier dudes were part of the birthday fun.
And they definitely seem to be up to something...

What are they up to? What new adventures are we going to find ourselves in? Will Patrick actually loose his mind working on this next book?

For the answers to these and other questions tune in to the next post at The Adventures of Patrick and Lisa (And some of you (you know who you are...) should also tune in at the family reunion...).

Well, I guess there's really not much else to say,
Except...

See you next post!