My Other New Job

Hello all,

Some fun random updates since my last post for your amusement and consideration.  In my effort to save money and be able to actually afford being a stay-at-home-dad-turned author, we have done the sensible thing and let go of our gardener, housekeeper, small army of winged flying monkeys, and so forth.  Thus I now find myself gardening, cleaning the house and fighting off tinmen and lions.  All of which is part of the package deal alongside the staples of cooking the food, carting the kids to and from their activities and school, and working on my abs (trophy husbands need good abs, right?).  Besides the abs, I'm doing pretty well.

However alongside all of this 'Domestic Engineering' (my New Job), I am also trying to get my creative pursuits off the ground.  In this capacity, I am writing my first book, a fast paced sci-fi adventure filled with action and adventure.  This is my Other New Job.  According to The Plan, I write from roughly nine to noon everyday.  Sometimes this happens, sometimes responsibilities from my primary job (reference kid carting, parenting, winged monkey grooming) interrupts.  Overall though, I am making some good progress, and have hit a good cadence where I write at least five days a week.

The struggle I have found is to be good about keeping to a schedule.  As long as have my butt physically in a chair, in front of a computer, I find it easy to write.  But it is amazing the things our brain will invent to keep us from doing that.  There are always some more dishes to do, some schedule to optimize, a blog post to write (at least its writing), and don't even get me started on the distractions offered by social media.  There exists a fantastic book given to me by one of the smartest engineers I ever had the pleasure to work with in my professional career, Gabe Beddingfield.  The book is called The War of Art, and is a thin little thing that reads like a manifesto for getting your creative butt in gear.  I normally don't go for the 'motivational self-help book' type of thing, but this guy totally worked for me.  I highly recommend it for anyone who has always had some creative outlet that in their heart of hearts they know to be their life's passion, but that they have never quite gotten around to doing for some reason.  For me, at least, this book was the answer.  Well, this book, and going to the remotest part of Death Valley, soaking myself in hot water, and coming to the truth of my life.  What was that truth?

I wanted to write.  I want to write.  I will write.

So, when my wife and I sat down to figure out which one of us should quit our job to tend the home fires, I volunteered.  It was the leap from everything I knew to go pursue the goals I kept telling myself I would do someday.  The Other New Job.

So, what's this book I am writing you ask?  (Okay, so maybe I am asking for you, but work with me here people)  It's a sci-fi novel that follows a group of mercenaries looking for that one last score so they can settle down and find a place of their own.  It's got action, mecha suits, jet bikes, betrayal and a dash of romance.  Is it the best book ever written?  You decide.  Is it done yet?  Almost.  What's it called?  The working title is "Pariah Legion: Spyder's Tale".

My friend Venkat Malladi turned me on to a cool new way to publish through a website/company called Inkshares.com.  They basically took the Kickstarter crowd funding approach and applied it to book publishing.  You the author try to work up interest (that means backers) in your book, and if you hit the target number, your book gets published.  If not, all of the backers get their money back, and that's that.  Their bar for publishing is pretty high (750 copies for an ebook, 1000 for print) which I honestly find somewhat intimidating, but luck would have it they are currently running a cool contest called their "Swords and Lasers" collection.  The top five books in that contest get published, which has become my new goal in life, outside of raising beautiful children and fighting off giant mutant cockroaches.

So, how can you help?  Swing by the site for Pariah Legion: Spyder's Tale and pre-order a book or three.  Tell your friends.  Tell your friend's friends.  Have them tell the BBC while fighting off giant mutant mecha girls from Zanzibar.  It will be fun!  I promise.

If you have made it this far, you are already my hero.  Thank you.  What does this have to do with Domestic Engineering?  Nothing.... or possibly everything.  When I left my job, I left to take care of my family, but I also left to write.  I left so I would have as few excuses as possible left to stand in the way of achieving The Work I have been telling myself all of my life I wanted to do.

Talk soon.  Must go herd girls, read bedtime stories, brush (and floss!) teeth and so forth.  Just remember...

"Help struggle a starving artists..."