I’ve been wanting to capture the whole story of this book for some time now, but the task seemed overwhelming. I’ve decided to take it in bite size chunks, as I think of things. So this first part is just the summary. It’s all most people will read anyway. So for all of you Sgt. Joe Friday types, the is “just the facts.” We’ll get to you Paul Harvey, “the rest of the story” types in due time.
I’ve always enjoyed writing. When I worked in foster care, I got to do a lot of writing because my schedule was 9 days on and 5 days off. During my 5 days off, I drank a lot of coffee and did a lot of writing. I even kept a notebook of ideas, but I was never able to finish anything. I went to grad school from 2006 to 2008, and that kind of killed any desire to write or read anything for a couple years. Then kids, then life, then . . . yeah. The Relational God was one of the ideas I had, and it seemed to blend nicely into what I was doing, what I was interested in, and what God was teaching me.
Unfortunately, every time I would hit the 50 page mark or so, the book would just start to devolve into a mess of uncompleted themes and thoughts. Do you know how many directions you can go with a book that covers the relationships of child, spouse, sibling, and parent? It’s a wonder I kept it under 300 pages in the end. I mean there are some people who make their careers out of just 1/2 or even 1/4 of one of those relationships (i.e. wives or husbands, sons or daughters, or even mothers of daughters, etc.).
It’s a big topic.
And there was something about it that I just couldn’t shake. In 2015, after about the third attempt, I put it away for a little while. As 2016 was getting started, I dusted it off, and I found that, as I was writing, more of the content was showing up in my Sunday school lessons. So, in September of 2016, I approached our class about going through it with me, so I could marry my studying for the book with my studying for teaching. The first few weeks of teaching the content allowed me to put a frame around the book that drove it forward. And, for a year, our class stuck it out with me. During the week I would study and prepare a lesson. Then on Sunday night, I would try to capture in writing everything we had discussed during class. Once the structure was in place, it wasn’t long before I was able to move ahead of the class discussions in the writing, then Sunday nights turned into editing and reshaping the material based on where the conversation led.
In the second quarter of this year, a friend sent me a link to a course from Michael Hyatt (www.michaelhyatt.com) on getting published. It opened my eyes to an entire world I knew existed, but I didn’t know much about. This course encouraged me to prepare a book proposal (think of it as a resume for a book) and try to secure an agent. Many of the agents I talked to actually had good things to say about the content, but because I couldn’t bring any readers to the table (i.e. I have no “platform”) they told me publishers wouldn’t consider it. This was both encouraging and discouraging. Encouraging, because they liked the book. Discouraging, because all the stuff I thought publishers were supposed to do (i.e. marketing), turned out to be my job. So, after several rejections, I figured, if I have to build the market any way, why not just publish it myself? I then started doing all the reading I could about producing a quality product, and I started my own publishing company – Tusitala Publishers – to get this book to market. I did all this, by the way, while we were trying to move. Then I spent 1/2 of our August vacation at the beach in a coffee shop trying to edit the book for print, finish the book, and come up with a marketing strategy.
Turns out writing the book is the easy part (and needless to say, my wife is ready for this book to be done).
It was during that vacation that I realized how much I didn’t know. Not too long after we got back, we were having dinner with some friends, and the men sequestered off and came up with a marketing strategy. There have been so many God things during the last few months (which is why I wanted this post to be about 10x longer – so I could capture them all). I have been amazed to see Him work. And there have been several instances where I’ve just had to give the whole process over to Him. But more on those in subsequent posts.
The big picture is that God gets the glory for the completion, success, and marketing of this book.
Over the past month, as we’ve approached the final deadlines, I’ve probably read the book at least three times and made several adjustments. In total, I think I’ve read the book seven times. I have had it professionally edited and professionally laid out for eBook and print format.
[By the way, one quick caveat here. If you are reading on Kindle, buy the Amazon copy. If you are reading on an iPad, use iBooks and buy the Apple copy. If you are reading on a Nook, and buy the Barnes and Noble copy. I have found that – no matter what we do – it just doesn’t look right on the Kindle app for iPad and iPhone.]
So now, here we are. One week to launch date. I’m working on the website and blog with the nervous energy of someone waiting (because there’s not much else I can do – the design is frozen and being printed). In future posts I’ll discuss the publishing world in more detail (and there are certainly quite a few pieces of it that I still don’t understand), but it’s done. Now I have to build my platform. So this is really my first blog post, and I’m excited about having a “hobby” that I enjoy.
To everyone who has contributed to this book coming to life, thank you. To everyone who is tired of hearing me talk about it, thank you for listening. For everyone who wants to find out more, buy the book!
Print: Amazon
Kindle: Amazon
iPad/iPhone: Apple
Nook: Barnes & Noble