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The cold has finally come upon the land, with temperatures dropping below 0°F. There have been some times we’ve had to pull the bed up close to the wood stove, but overall the yurt has been warmer than many houses that we visit.

That doesn’t mean we refuse the offers of our dear friends who invite us over for a warm meal . . .

We’ve been occupied mostly by writing. We’ve been working on a new young adult novel, set about a hundred (or so) years in the future. The book itself went very quickly, fully written in about 3 1/2 months. Now we’ve put in approximately two months of editing, test-reads, and the ever-essential query and synopsis. Today or tomorrow we’ll send out the first of our queries to agents. In the past this process has felt rather tense, but this time around everything feels different. We decided to write the book simply to write the book, without thought of whether it would someday be published. The result is that we had a great time doing it. It was a blast (even the multiple edits!), and in a sense it’s already been wildly successful for us, since we enjoyed the journey so thoroughly. Now we’re just as excited to put it out into the world to see if we can get an agent to represent it.

Besides writing, we’ve been going on daily adventures in the woods, following otter tracks, searching for the fisher, and standing in amazement at the artwork that nature surrounds us with. My new client will begin on February 1st, and we’re equally excited for that. Each Metamorphosis client brings their own challenges, joys, and adventure to the mix.

We’ll leave you with a photo (above) of one of the ridiculously beautiful sights that greeted us the other day.

Winter has come to the forest at last, a heavy snowfall on New Year’s Eve. As usual, we slept through the New Year, though sharp retorts and bright red skies marked midnight as our friends up the hill lit off fireworks.

The yurt is staying warm, though anything not cooked on the top of the woodstove involves our outdoor kitchen (a Coleman stove given to us by some dear friends). Still, it’s somehow joyful to go out and boil one’s tea water surrounded by wind, pine trees, and the birds that visit our suet feeders.

These birds are BRAVE! We’re creating sign language for each species, since we can’t find them in any of our online or paper-and-ink resources. Rose-breasted nuthatch is “friend bird”, because they’re the bravest of all. Chickadees are “cute bird”. The woodpeckers come in three varieties, each one signed with more fingers pecking a tree. Downy, hairy, and pileated woodpeckers. Blue jays (no sign yet) fly over often, and crows (“spirit birds”) are always talking as they wander the forests.

This week we’ve dedicated as writing retreat. We began a new young adult trilogy about 3 ½ months ago, and book one is already finished. We’re doing polishing edits right now. After that, we’ll begin the query process of submitting to agents.

We got a chance to enjoy the company of many of our family and friends this holiday season and want to wish everyone a New Year filled with abundance, playfulness, magic and adventure!

Publishing your own writing in the form of an e-book is a great way to retain more creative control, rights, and money. Here we outline some of the nuts and bolts of what e-publishing can offer and how to go about it.

Our own adventures in publishing were what eventually pointed us toward e-publishing. In the past we had tried the traditional route, querying agents and weathering rejections. After about forty rejections, we landed a high-powered New York agent (the one who handles John Grogan of Marley and Me fame!), and we thought that at last we had it made!  But the traditional publishing scene is a confused and perhaps terrified beast right now, and after too long a time courting the publishing industry, our manuscript was returned to us, unpublished. It seems that it’s more difficult than ever to get your book published these days.

So we began to ask another question: How do you publish an ebook? We soon learned that e-book publishing isn’t very difficult, and has numerous advantages.

You Retain Creative Control

When you land an agent, he or she will probably do a thorough edit, and when you land a publisher, your book will again go through an editing process. Some authors feel that the final product bears little resemblance to their initial manuscript. Although agents and editors tend to have a fair idea of what will make a book more saleable, saleability isn’t always the same thing as quality or ‘heart’. When you publish your e-book on Amazon, you retain full creative control, even after publishing. If you or a reader finds a mistake you missed even after 10 edits, you can correct the mistake (we all find these mistakes in traditionally published books, but they can’t fix it until the next printing). It’s details like this that allow you to present your readers with the story you originally intended for them to experience.

You Retain All Rights

In traditional publishing, you sign your rights away. In effect, the book is no longer truly yours. Hopefully you’ll get good compensation for the rights you sell, but you lose a lot of freedoms. If you decide you want to self-publish a slightly altered version of your book after you sign on with a traditional publisher, you can’t do it. You’re bound by a contract. With e-book publishing, you hold all the cards, and can change your strategy according to market changes, life events, or creative whim.

You Keep More Money

If you price your e-book at $2.99 or higher with Amazon, you keep 70% of every book sold. (If under $2.99, you keep 35%). This is a much nicer cut than you’ll see from a traditional publisher, where you’ll get about 15% if you go hardcover (and much less if you’re softcover).

Of course, there are disadvantages as well, the largest of which is that it’s not easy to get your book sold. This takes some marketing savvy. Yet, Rebecca and I did an experiment when we first went in to e-book publishing. We wrote a short book ( How to Survive the End of the World if All You’ve Got Left is Your Kindle) just for experiment’s sake, made it funny and educational, asked a few friends to leave reviews (a total of three), and waited to see what would happen. What happened is this — the book is earning a small but consistent amount of money every month.

A few of weeks ago we tried another experiment, publishing a fantasy trilogy that follows a young woman’s coming of age as she’s torn from her noble life and learns to find her way among pirates, swords, and betrayals.
Entitled The Lillian Trilogy, it’s off to a great start, tripling the monthly earnings we were getting from our first experiment. And that’s after being offered on Amazon for only a short while.

How To Get Your E-Book Published

Ready to give it a try yourself? We found an incredible guide that walks you through the process, and we’d like to share it with you. We’ve used it to great results. Just go to this website and click on the photo of the birds to get started — CJ’s Easy As Pie Kindle Tutorials. We’ve used it again and again. It’s clear, concise, and guides you through the process step-by-step, giving much better instructions than we found on Amazon or on any forums.

We invite you to read the Lillian Trilogy, and if you like it, we greatly appreciate reviews! =)

The Threat of a Wedding, the First Book of the Lillian Trilogy

Condemned to Paradise, the Second Book of the Lillian Trilogy

Finding Home, the Third Book of the Lillian Trilogy

If you’d like to see our other titles, we invite you to visit their Amazon pages:

To Slay the Dead, the short tale of a mercenary hired to kill someone who is already dead.

Alien Report Card, a book by a real live alien (we helped him publish it =)

The Savvy Citizen’s Guide™ To Surviving the End of the World if All You Have Left is Your Kindle, Nook, iPad, Sony Reader, or Other Way Cool Reading Device.

Every year, Rebecca and Jen organize a bellydance recital at the Raw Deal in Menomonie. It’s a wonderful chance for all the area troupes to get together, perform for each other, support each other, and have a great time.

This year Rebecca put together a solo, combining belly dance with some of her Indian dance training. I like to call it ‘Temple Dancing’. A friend took a video so we could share it with our family and friends that weren’t able to join us!

About ten years ago, we began writing a fictional story about a young woman who came from a very sheltered life. The world conspired to bring her a storm, and her adventures took her to foreign lands, sailing with pirates, and learning that she had a talent for swordplay. We went through the usual attempts to get an agent and get our story published, all to no avail. Set in Carador, a fantasy world that could almost be a historical Earth (in the sense that magic and dragons exist, but most people have little or no real experience with such things), the trilogy follows Lillian as she comes of age and seeks to avenge her family’s downfall.
We invite all of our friends and family to read the trilogy and let us know what you think! The books are only available digitally at present, which means that unless you have an iPad or Nook or Kindle or whatnot, you’ll have to download the free Kindle reader for your computer. The first book, The Threat of a Wedding, is only 99 cents.

If you would like to take a look, you can follow the links below. If you read and enjoy the books, posting your review on Amazon is GREATLY appreciated, as that is how Amazon decides how much to promote a given book.
Thank you, and enjoy!

Hugs,

Kenton and Rebecca and Mirabelle

The Threat of a Wedding, Book One of the Lillian Trilogy

Condemned to Paradise, Book Two of the Lillian Trilogy

Finding Home, Book Three of the Lillian Trilogy

Spending some quality free-time together . . .

We’re still at home in the yurt, and learning a lot about our use of resources, our relationship with technology, and much about nature since we’re living so close to the rhythms. Our life is going through a slowing-down process, and this involves moving through many changes. We haven’t driven our car for five days. We eat more deliberately. We pay a lot more attention to what we purchase at the grocery, since trash and recycling takes much more effort to deal with.

One of our biggest challenges has been our computers. At our last abode, we started to get a bit addicted to them. We’d surf frequently, spending time on science sites or belly dance sites. We were intaking a lot of second-hand knowledge, which had certain advantages, but knowledge was so easy and direct that we began to let it impinge on the attention we gave to each other and Mirabelle. The laptop would even find its way to the dinner table sometimes as we researched something interesting or I wrote back to a life coaching client or Metamorphosis client. There were more and more moments when we were just ‘zoned out’, paying more attention to the computers than to each other.

Part of our yurt experiment has been about separating ourselves from the computers, to make our relationship with them more deliberate. It’s worked — we come up to the office at our friends’ house each day and use the computers very deliberately, answering our emails, checking our blogs, and then getting to our writing.

It’s the writing that’s the problem. We’ve decided to put some of our works up on Amazon as e-books, and have begun writing a new book in the young adult genre. With the creativity flowing, we are hungering for more computer time for reasons other than surfing — we’re in one of those ‘binge writing’ times when we could easily put down six or eight hours of writing a day.

It’s an interesting experiment to slow down during this creative process. We get to talk about the book a lot more, since we limit our office time and if we bring the computer to the yurt for extra writing, the battery only lasts a short while. More talk is equating to a more developed world, plot, and characters, which is good. But it also leaves us wanting to do more actual writing.

We’ll see how this develops. So far, it’s difficult but exciting, and we’re feeling like it might add up to a much deeper, more engaging, and even, perhaps, more salable book than we’ve written in the past. Time will tell.

We’ve now been living in the yurt for a couple of weeks. Some basic improvements have been made, such as gravity-fed running water that feeds into a sink (yipeee!), the installment of our wood-burning stove (thanks Ken and Jay!!!), and finally getting things fairly tidied up. Such details aside, however, we’ve been noting some interesting psychological ramifications of living in a yurt.

Living Round

There’s something about living in a round space. It seems to have a calming, soothing effect. Everywhere you look, there are circles visible, and the pleasing geometry of the latticework and rafters. Each evening when we get into bed, we can’t believe how beautiful it is to look up and see the radiating spokes centering on the skylight dome. Stars sparkle, or late-summer fireflies flitter by. In the morning, caterpillars have traced out mystic runes on the condensed dew up above.

Living in One Room

This, we imagined, might be a negative, but in many ways it’s very positive. We love to be together as a family, and it’s lovely to be able to have one person taking  a nap while another cooks or does dishes, and we’re right there together. This also builds a sense of togetherness and awareness that we didn’t feel in a home divided by rooms.

What About Bugs?

Oddly, there are less bugs than we’ve encountered in any house we’ve ever lived in. Mosquitoes are our biggest battle (they are terrible this year), and when they’re out we have to open and close the door very quickly. Otherwise, spiders are less common than in a house, and no one else gets inside.

Quiet

It’s been remarkable to note how LOUD houses can be. It seems that there is always the humming of a refrigerator, furnace, air conditioner, dishwasher, or some other appliance. The yurt isn’t really quiet — it’s just that there are new sounds, such as crickets, coyotes, and cicadas.

Disadvantages . . .

By far the toughest thing for us has been a lack of refrigeration, especially as we both have a lot of dairy in our diets. It looks like an lp refrigerator is in our near future, which would allow such luxuries as milk, yogurt, butter, and cheese. Cooking has also been a challenge, especially as we haven’t had a chance to set up our cooking area yet. We don’t miss electric lights at all, and we’ve never had a TV. The lack of electricity isn’t really an issue.

Trying to Reduce Our Impact

After we’re moved in, we’ll be attempting to keep track of our water usage (we now haul down about a gallon a day), trash (so far about gallon-sized bag per week), and our electricity usage (the Naglers kept track of their usage before we arrived, so we’ll get to see how much our office in their home consumes). We’re hoping that we can reduce our impact to more moderate levels than we were living at before.

All in all, things are off to a good start. We’re having new adventures, but they’re mostly fun. We’ll be happy when mosquito season is over, though . . . =)

At last, we’re living in our yurt! In future posts we’ll explain more about our experiment, but we wanted a chance to thank everyone who helped us move.

Cathy, for equipment and the time to move without feeling rushed, and Scott for the use of his trailer which saved us many trips.

Kate, who loaned us her truck and trailer to move the dojo. We got it all in one trip!

Ken and Jay, for helping us move the last of the ‘big items’ and for always offering to help more. AND for seeing that we needed a break the night they helped, and cooking us an awesome meal, providing showers, rest, and company.

Bear, for his muscle, sweat, and blood taking down the yurt on a day when Wisconsin was hotter and more humid than the Amazon. You’re amazing!

Mom and Carl, for the awesome drill, for watching Mirabelle, and for a full day of erecting the yurt. We are so thankful for your help!

The Nagler family, for giving us a new place to call home, and Sara for a hard day’s work moving the dojo, as well as helping out in so many other ways.

Andy, who graciously let us ‘borrow’ Jen, who put in more days and more hours than we can count. What would we do without you, Jen?

Mirabelle Soleil, who was an angel through the whole thing, suffering heat, late nights, mosquito bites, and lots of driving with smiles, giggles, and reminders that this moment, right here, is the Very Best Place to Be.

When we returned from Camp Osprey, we were ready to begin moving into our yurt. And . . . we came home to a ‘For Sale’ sign posted by Cathy’s father. It turns out that he decided not to honor his agreement with his daughter to sell her a portion of his land (the agreed-upon section was where we had put up our yurt), but to sell all of his land and buildings in one package deal.

We were pretty dismayed. We had so much excitement built up around moving into the yurt, and now we’ll have to move it again. Since our time at Cathy’s is limited because she wants to reclaim the bottom part of her house within a year, we decided that if we were going to move, it was time to look to new horizons.

We went on a lot of walks and talks, sorting through our feelings. The last year spent at Cathy’s has been tremendous. We managed to get Metamorphosis rolling, and her land was a perfect launching-ground. We acquired our yurt. We got some great writing done, moving closer to our writing goals. We wanted to find a place that might be just as nourishing when we made our next move.

There were so many considerations. We hadn’t yet had a chance to try our yurt experiment, so we decided to stay the course and see if we could find some land to ‘Wildstead’ on. After Sara, my Metamorphosis client and dear friend, suggested that we might move onto her land, we decided to take the plunge.

Now we find ourselves surrounded by warmth and support. So many people from the Prairie Farm community, where we’ll be moving, have written to say how excited they are that we’re coming to their ‘neck of the woods’. And so many of our friends and loved ones have offered to help with our move and have expressed their enthusiasm about our adventure. Thank you!

We’re bursting with excitement. We’ll soon be posting a more detailed explanation of what we’re doing during our yurt experiment, but first . . . we have to move. More adventures to come!

Last week we went with my two Metamophosis clients and their families up to Carl’s cabin, which I’ve come to call Camp Osprey after the fish-eagles that are always calling from their nest nearby.

This adventure brought us to far northern Minnesota, near the Canadian border, in the heart of the Superior National Forest. While I had some nefarious plans for my clients, we also had time for some other adventures.

This is Rory and I just after a turtle-catching expedition that went bad. The canoe capsized, we landed in viscous mud, and had to drag ourselves and the swamped canoe to shore. We got home shivering, started a fire, and had to clean ourselves with buckets of lake water. Luckily Rebecca and Ashley came to our rescue and did the dousing for us.

A more successful turtle expedition graced us with this little cutie.

There were plenty of dragonflies to rescue from the water. The mosquitoes were bad, so the dragonflies were our friends. They’d swiftly vibrate their wings after they were pulled from the lake in order to dry them off for flight.

Here, Andrew and Ashley stand in front of their shelter, which kept them dry and helped to collect the heat from a specially-designed fire pit they constructed in front of their shelter.

Both Sara and Andrew encountered three experiences I helped to facilitate for them. The first was a situation where they could get ‘lost’, but both were able to utilize their direction-finding skills, including songlines, tracking, and intuitive direction-sense, to find their way home through the tangled forest.

The second was a ‘Vision Quest’ — a day, a night, and a day spent alone in the forest with minimal food and almost no equipment. This was a chance to have some ‘nothing-time’, which is a rare commodity in our culture. They both spent about 30 hours of Just Being in a small area, communing with nature, experiencing their surroundings, and existing in a state where there is nothing to do and nowhere to go. They both returned with powerful observations.

The third was a ‘Survival Night’ — again, about 30 hours spent in a setting where their goal was to live as comfortably as they could with a minimum of equipment. Sara took her husband Rick, and Andrew took his wife Ashley. They had along no matches, no sleeping bags, no tent, no food, no water. They returned with great stories and much learned — Sara and Rick managed to catch perch, which they prepared in various ways (including Perch Tea =), Andrew and Ashley crafted a magnificent shelter, and all of them managed to create fire and obtain safe drinking water. Way to go!