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We’re down in Viroqua, WI, to see the Newenhouse, a super-ultra-mega efficient home design. Of course, we’re also taking the opportunity to explore the unglaciated topography– wandering hills and valleys that escaped the scouring influence when the last glaciers retreated a mere ten or fifteen thousand years ago.

Last night we stayed in a hotel room, and King Ludd would be proud of us. It was . . . strange. We haven’t slept in square walls since we visited family at Christmas, and that nearly two-month stretch in the yurt has been enough so that we’ve almost forgotten what modern technology was like (they say as they make a blog post — ah, it’s a tangled skein). At any rate, the strangest thing is the electric heat. You just turn this little dial and it gets warmer or cooler. Whoa. No getting up to feed the wood stove, no adjusting dampers to get the air flow “just right”. You simply  turn the dial, and moments later the entire room is “just right”. Then there are the electric lights. This was so odd that we pretty much abandoned them. They’re just too harsh. So we had a bath in the dark, and in the morning we slowly cracked the curtains open to let in the natural light.

Did I mention a bath? Yup. We both had one, Mirabelle staying in for the entire duration. You merely turn that crank and hot water comes out. No heating over the fire. Wow.

The reason King Ludd would be proud is that we’re not exactly celebrating these things. It’s almost . . . too easy. We’re supposed to think that all this technology improves our lives, but there is something very different about being toasty warm when you’ve decided to use that “perfect” log, as opposed to when you just turn a dial. There’s something about the sunlight that slips in through the yurt’s dome, telling you (by its color and quality) what the weather is like outside. And there is certainly something wonderful about the thin walls that let you hear the wind, the soft patter of snowflakes falling, and the morning crow-song and squirrel chirps.

Today we’re off to the mysterious Wildcat Mountain, then in the evening we’ll tour the Newenhouse. Wildcat is said to have a buried treasure near the mountain’s summit, by the way, and we can never resist a treasure hunt. Wish us luck!

Many of you have asked for updates on how the ‘elimination communication’ thing is going with Mirabelle. Today, we definitely have some news to report.

Although Mirabelle is a bit ‘behind’ (pun intended?) babies who are 100% diaper-free, the approach we’ve been using really seems to be making an impression. At almost sixteen months, we only use a couple of diapers a day, and at this point she never poops in a diaper (unless she is sick and there is diarrhea, which can sneak up on her). She uses sign language to tell us when she needs to go to the bathroom, and then will go over to her baby toilet to do her business. A number of times she has done this unassisted. She’s walking about playing, and the next thing we know she’s at her toilet, making her deposit.

The last two nights, she’s done something else significant. She’s woken up around 2 or 3 in the morning (she’s never pooped at night before this), signaled that she needs to go, and we take her over to the toilet. Both nights she has pooped in her toilet, then come back to bed and gone right to sleep. We always felt lucky that she didn’ t have night poops, but now that she does, she’s letting us know so that she doesn’t have to poop in her diaper.

One of the ideas behind EC is that you don’t ever do ‘toilet training’. It just develops naturally as parents and baby communicate about how we do the ‘potty thing’ in our culture.

It may seem strange, but this has been one of the most fun parts of parenting. It’s helped us to develop a high level of communication with Mirabelle so that we have a strong understanding of what she wants, doesn’t want, when she is in pain from teething, when she’s sick, etc. Rebecca can usually tell with a glance if Mirabelle has a fever, and the thermometer nearly always agrees with her assessment.

We’d definitely recommend some version of EC (Try checking out The Diaper Free Baby by Christine Gross-Loh). You can start at any time, and can do it even when your baby is wearing diapers. (Just learn their signals and take them to the potty before they go. Most babies apparently love it.). You don’t have to do it full time, either — even if you only see your baby after work each day, you can do an hour or two of EC practice. Even a little, most EC parents say, pays off.

The next step for Mirabelle? Today she went over to her potty and began to take off her diaper. She had one side off but couldn’t quite get the other, so we helped her out and she did her thing in the potty. Yipee!

When we first decided to give yurt-life a try, we felt sure that there were amazing things waiting for us. We just weren’t sure what. The obvious lessons had to do with consumption, with how much ‘stuff’ we need in order to be happy, with exploring the idea of living in a one-room situation (as much of the world’s people do) as opposed to a multi-room situation (which is the norm here in the States).

Living in nature delivers beauty every day

Yet the real lessons have been much more subtle. Most of all, our life has slowed down. I’ve long known that this slowing down leads to immense happiness, but it was nevertheless powerful to re-experience it. Interestingly, it took us much longer to find this semi-mystical state in the yurt. (Longer, that is, than what I’ve witnessed with people going out into the woods and living time-and-schedule-free). It was rough at first, going through that slowing-down process. But now we’ve emerged from the other side, and everything feels very, very clear.

The things we’ve encountered in this slowed-down state are our own mindsets regarding success, love, and life patterns. We’ve now developed a morning practice, where we don’t just get up and eat breakfast or rush off to whatever “needs” to be done. Instead, we read from some of the books that are influencing us right now (the Busting Loose books by Robert Scheinfeld, The Paradox of Intention by Marvin Shaw, Zen Flesh Zen Bones by Paul Reps, and most powerfully of all, The Gift by Daniel Ladinsky, which is a collection of poems by Hafiz). Then we talk.

Mirabelle doesn't always join in our morning talks, but she always participates. Here she watches from her perch in the chair given us by our dear friends Murray and Madonna

Since we started this, life has become quite a bit more serendipitous. The things we were chasing are unfolding before us, and the patterns that we’ve been continuing to follow in our lives are falling away. It’s a magical time. The biggest secret behind it all? Hafiz talks about it in every single poem. It’s being immersed in love, and encountering every moment of your life with that love. Every person, whether they are “nice” to you or not. Every emotion, whether it is happiness or frustration. This love reaches out to everyone around you, making their dreams start to come true as well.

It can be challenging, at first, to bring love to bear in every moment. We’re so used to chasing our preferences, to pushing things away. Yet when we welcome everything in, such changes open before us! It seems to be a strange rule of the universe that “what we push away will enter our lives”.

We’re considering the possibility of moving into our friends’ small “bread house” come spring. Partly this is because winters are much easier than summers in the yurt, and partly it’s because we’d like to devote the next year to finishing the second two books in the trilogy we’re working on (the first one is being sent out to agents and getting a great reception thus far). Having electricity available would make the writing much easier. The yurt, for the next year, would become a dojo/dance studio/meditation hall.

The bread house would feel like living in a gypsy wagon. We haven’t figured out the square feet, but it’s probably less than our 20′ yurt. We’ve always been attracted to the idea of a “small house”, so this next experiment would give us a chance to see what that’s like.

The more we explore during our morning talks, however, the more we discover some startling things about life. One of them is a platitude we’ve heard over and over, but its importance can’t be overstated. It’s that life takes on a vibrant hue when you are fully engaged in this very moment, in love with your life as it is, unafraid to dream, yet without any grasping of those dreams. Then you’re always home, no matter where you are.

Since she was born, Mirabelle has been attending belly dance class. She loves to watch all of the beautiful dancing, and all of Rebecca and Jen’s students are incredibly welcoming. The other day, while practicing a veil piece, Mirabelle picked up a silk veil and gave things a try.

A special thanks to all of the students who have gracefully included Mirabelle in class.

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.