Reading a Chapter from My Book

There I am, sitting in my grandmother’s rocking chair reading the first chapter from my novel, Least of These. It’s kind of like attending an author reading at your favorite bookstore, except you can be in your house and I can be in my house and nobody pays  me to record audiobooks for a reason. But it’s still pretty cool.

Watch the video.

You can buy a copy from Amazon if you like. A few friends have also created e-versions from the free PDF (iPhone and ePub, I think), but I haven’t gotten around to posting them. If you’re clamoring for those, hit me up in the comments I’ll stop procrastinating.

And for the record, I noticed one error and a handful of corrections I wanted to make after reading the first chapter outloud four or five times. I told you it was a rough draft.

My Friend Adam Bottiglia is a Yo-yo Pro

Adam Bottiglia Yo-yo PackagingYesterday I walked into Walgreens and there it was: “Adam Bottiglia, Yo-yo Master,” right there on the packaging of the Peter Fish yo-yo’s, complete with the video display that also featured Adam getting his yo-yo groove on. You can watch Adam in action or see me show the video to Lexi.

More than just a resurgence of the yo-yo (can I claim to be ahead of the trend?), this is my old yo-yo buddy making it big (if you consider “big” to be featured on yo-yo packaging and in a video loop in an aisle of Walgreens stores across the country). Adam is the guy who taught me how to yo-yo when we were both Petra-loving, Christian T-shirt-wearing geeks. We had a yo-yo ministry in high school (that was even featured in the Detroit Free Press, complete with crazy cool photo). He taught me how to do street performing in Chicago, which made a crazy summer adventure even crazier. He was in my wedding and I was in his.

So you can understand why I think it’s pretty cool to see my friend on the packaging of a yo-yo. I think it’s so cool I bought four of ’em.

You can see more of Adam in action at YoTricks.com. And check out the yo-yos. $3.99 is dirt cheap for ball bearing yo-yos (back in the day we paid at least $20) and they work pretty good.

Fun fact: Adam and I had the chance to be yo-yo pros back in 1998. As I recall, the Yomega corporation offered us something like $20,000 to be their touring yo-yo pros. Being a freshman in college, that was the equivalent of a year’s tuition and not tempting enough to get us to drop out and become professional yo-yoers (besides, I don’t think I was ever that good). It’s cool to see Adam still chasing the dream.

Haiti Update from Lauren Stanley

Last night I went to hear Rev. Lauren Stanley speak about the relief efforts in Haiti (after catching the end of the Daytona 500, of course, which made me a little late). She is a missionary of the Episcopal Church appointed to serve the the diocese of Haiti and has been asked to remain in the United States, coordinating immediate relief efforts and long-term development through the Episcopal Church and Episcopal Relief and Development.

So basically her boss is the Bishop of Haiti, Jean Zache Duracin (last I heard he was living in a tent). The Episcopal Church of Haiti is running something like 20 refugee camps and caring for more than 20,000 people. Among those are the priests, parishioners, parents and students of the churches and schools with which my own church has had a 20-year partnership.

So Lauren Stanley was giving Twin Cities churches an update on what’s happening on the ground in Haiti. I went to hear what’s happening in Haiti and learn how the money Color4aCause has raised is helping (a tiny, tiny fraction of the money that’s been raised). Lauren had sobering updates, butt-kicking statements and in-depth stories and history to share. She’s a firecracker.

Continue reading Haiti Update from Lauren Stanley

Consistency is the Key to Generosity

I meet with my tax guy today, which means I’ve been frantically pulling together forms and statements and crunching numbers. I hate accounting and I’m horribly disorganized when it comes to that stuff. Which is exactly why I hire a tax guy. It’s always wise to hire people who are really good at the things you’re really bad at.

Anyway, I had an revelation as I was looking at the numbers for our charitable giving. I felt like I’d been pretty generous this past year. My wife and I have talked a lot about generosity and giving and being more intentional about supporting good causes, not just with our words but with our wallets. We’ve tried to support causes as they come up and not be so cheap about it. Personally, I’ve tried to only plug the causes I’ve actually donated to. It seems disingenuous to spread the word about something but not chip in yourself.

So with all that focus on giving, I thought we’d do pretty well for 2009. Go us.

Turns out our giving is down compared to 2008. By quite a bit. Doh.

There can be all kinds of factors at work to explain this, including the fact that we made less money in 2009 or we were more tight-fisted because of the travel expenses to Ethiopia or whatever. But I think the real factor is consistency.

While we tried to actively donate to more causes in 2009, the result was a lot of tiny donations. $10 here, $20 there. That’s good money and it will go to good causes, but it doesn’t add up to much. It’s a drop in the bucket. What does add up is consistent giving. Weekly or monthly donations add up a lot more quickly. That sounds completely obvious and it is (I told you I hate accounting), but it doesn’t really sink in until you sit back and look at the numbers over a period of time.

Our donations were down in 2009 because we lowered one of our consistent donations. It seemed financially prudent at the time (and still is), but it means we gave a lot less and our impact is likewise reduced.

Like much of life, it comes down to consistency. If you really want to make a difference in anything, you have to work at it consistently. You can’t just do something once and expect change. It’s true with teaching your kids, it’s true with learning any skill, it’s true with work–and it’s true with money.

[Note: Money and giving can be a pretty touchy subject. I’m not trying to tell anyone how to do it, I’m just sharing a lesson I learned. I also don’t mean to minimize one-time donations. Those one-time donations add up when you bring them together (remember how they made me bald?).]

I’ve Got a New Book: Least of These

Author Kevin D. Hendricks with his published creation, Least of TheseMy post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel Least of These is now published and widely available (the e-mail newsletter subscribers got the early word last night: subscribe now to be in the know). So much to talk about, I don’t even know where to begin.

What’s post-apocalyptic sci-fi? Think Mad Max’s Road Warrior. It’s the genre I go on and on about all the time. The world has barely survived some apocalypse (duh) and the survivors try to piece together an existence in the aftermath. There are usually recurring themes of boiling life down to its simplest elements, both in day to day survival and in bigger picture terms.

What is Least of These like? It might be comparable to the recent Denzel Washington flick The Book of Eli. Sort of. Mine has some action, some stock villains, a heroic female. But no iPods, swinging machetes (but arrows!) or utter desolation (or Denzel). I wrote Least of These in 2008 as a part of National Novel Writing Month. It’s been very lightly edited and published as a rough draft (hence the lame-o cover). It’s not deep literature, but hopefully it’s good for a rainy afternoon bit of fun (do people still consider reading fun?).

Why is the Internet so cool? Because I published this thing in three days. I got the idea on Tuesday. I went through the manuscript and made minor proofing edits (and missed loads, I’m sure), I did the layout in Microsoft Word, slaved over the cover in Photoshop and by Thursday was uploading a PDF file to CreateSpace. Three days. On Friday I ordered my proof copy. It arrived on Tuesday. You could buy a copy online that night. It was up on Amazon about a week later. Of course it helped that I had a manuscript lying around and had already read through it making editing notes. Go Internet. It’s a cool time to be creating stuff.

Why does the cover suck? Remember ‘published in three days’? Yeah, I have lots of friends who could design something better. Heck, Lexi could design something better (brainstorm!). But I wanted to crank it out quickly. Plus there’s that whole rough draft thing. It seemed disingenuous to put a lot of effort into the cover when I haven’t put a lot of effort into the editing (except for the last time I did that). It’s a rough draft, all the way around. I kind of like the idea of publishing rough draft versions like this. Get it out there, quick and dirty.

Where can I get a copy? You can score yourself a print copy of Least of These for only $9.99 or download the free PDF if you want to take it for a test read. For the record, I get a bigger royalty if you buy through CreateSpace. But buying through Amazon is pretty swell, too, since you can use your shipping deals and throw my book in with your regular shopping.

So there you have it. I had hoped to announce this a week ago, but that’s how things go.

Randomness: Article & Sick

All the best laid plans blow up. Especially when you get sick. For a week. Or two.

That’s my story. I’m going on week number two of being sick. This has to be the third or fourth time I’ve gotten sick this winter. Bleh. I’ll spare you the details (nothing worse than reading about people’s medical symptoms online—unless of course you’re looking for an online diagnosis by strangers, which can be loads of fun), except to say that I think the sinus pressure has blocked the hearing in my left ear. Feels like I went swimming and can’t get the water out. Otherwise I’m actually feeling better. And losing your hearing can have its benefits. Milo has an ear infection and has been pretty crabby—but his tantrums are that much quieter now.

On the plus side, Foursquare.org published an article I wrote yesterday. “Advocate for the Invisible” tells the story of homeless advocate and InvisiblePeople.tv founder Mark Horvath. I talk about him a lot, so it was fun to tell his story. It was also a challenge to do it in under 800 words. That article easily could have been twice as long. When I interviewed Mark for the story we talked for over three hours, so you can imagine the material I have and couldn’t possibly use. Good stuff.

Mark is a constant inspiration. The way he continues doing what he does despite all odds is incredible. As he says, he’s not called, he’s forced. He has no choice but to do this. He has a choice all right, but I’m not sure he could live with himself if he walked away from the homeless people he serves. I could use that kind of heart.