General Update

Blogging isn’t the only thing I’ve been letting go lately. I also haven’t been keeping up with filing, housework, the Onion, sex, Bill Shunn’s audio missionary memoir, and other activities (no, those are not listed in order of enjoyment). The reason is that I’m totally in crunch mode on finishing up text for the Mormon history timeline book. I’ve been working 5-6 hours every weeknight and 8-10 hours on both Saturday and Sunday (my wife even let me skip church and tithing duty for two Sundays). My kids are lucky to see me leave the house in the morning and sit down for dinner for maybe a half-hour.

Fortunately, this pain is relatively short-lived, and I’m getting paid fairly well. I’ve been working on the timeline 5-10 hours a week for a few months, and this intense crunch mode is really only 2-3 weeks. I don’t enjoy the pressure, but I do honestly enjoy the content and have felt quite intrigued and even inspired as I’ve researched early church history, the Book of Mormon, etc. It was particularly interesting to read about Joseph Smith and realize how human he was and how many people let him down, etc.

I should be done with all the principal writing by this next Tuesday or Wednesday, which will be a huge load off my back. I’m sure I’ll still have lots of work to do as far as revising, writing captions, editing, cutting or expanding text, proofreading, etc., but none of those are as difficult as generating new texts. I think this timeline will turn out really nice. It’s quite an international affair: the publisher is in England, the editor is in Kentucky, the design team is in Connecticut, maps are being created in India, and I believe the book is being printed in Hong Kong. I was originally supposed to gather 200-300 images for the book, but it drove me crazy and took too much time away from the writing, so I found someone else to do that.

I’m still pushing ahead with Zarahemla Books too. I’m a little leery sometimes about the debt I’ll be going into and whether I’ll be able to get everything done on time to follow my business plan, but overall I’m still having fun. It’s amazing how many little things I’ve had to do to set up my business and how much it costs, and I haven’t even done anything on any actual books yet. I’ve acquired two books I’m excited about, and I have my own novel to do, unless Doubleday surprises me and wants it (the manuscript is currently with a Doubleday editor). I’m going to give this venture up to $5,000 of my personal funds and about a year of my spare time, and I’m curious to see if it catches on enough to keep going beyond that.

Anyway, here are some family photos from our recent vacation in Park City, which was marred somewhat for me because I had to work 3-4 hours a day on that Mormon timeline…