It's my first book!!! :)

These are the most exciting days! I can hardly stand it! This winter I wrote my first book, and to me it was one of my life's major accomplishments, not soley for having produced a finished story, but for the joy I found in writing for an audience. If you know me, you know that I love to write, and if you know me very well then you know that I've been planning this for decades...I wanted to spend the first half of my life having adventures, and the second half, writing about what they mean to me.

And now the 2017 river season starts in just a few weeks! Can it get any better??? As a matter of fact, it can. This is where you fit in. In three weeks, I move back to the Ocoee River where I will spend the next seven months camping in the mountains for work. The first many weeks will be spent driving around in several different counties, advertising rafting trips to cabin rental managers, and then on the weekends taking rafting trips. That's right, friends...I love it so much I do it seven days a week. And that will continue on until October with fewer days spent advertising and more days rafting as the season progresses.  I don't have the time to market my book, write two more, and work. There are only 24 hours in a day. Fortunately, I can automate the publishing and book advertising part. It only needs a professional editor.

Pearls in the Mountains is set in the Appalachian Mountains. I draw largely from personal experience in this book, but muddy the lines heavily between fact and fiction while I explore how we affect each other, sometimes in the most subtle and surprising ways in this tapestry of life. Through that lens we learn ever greater definitions of gratitude, discernment, and reverence.

Mary is a successful young woman, but she is still searching. She wants to bring more adventure into her life, but she may be looking to make a massive life change. In these next two weeks, Mary expects adventures. She expects romance. But she doesn't expect the tragedies, and she doesn't expect the deep mysteries secreted away behind her lover's eyes. Eventually the strongest convictions can spring up from the tiniest realizations.

I need your help. I think employing a skilled, professional editor is crucial to self-publishing. It's also respectful...readers deserve a polished product. In its current state, Pearls in the Mountains is available on Amazon for purchase as an e-book. Let's call it the first edition. With the help of a few freinds, I have gone through three edits. But the structure has remained exactly the same. Once a professional has gone over it, I won't mind investing my river guiding funds into Amazon advertising. 

I also have some "stretch goals" that include cover design, a photoshoot, and web design. This includes a blog of all of my river trips for the 2017 season. At the end of the season, I'll go through the entries to see any emerging themes. I'll use those themes as a story line for a compilation to publish later. In the meantime, I'm writing a story that takes place before the Pearls in the Mountains timeframe and in a large part, informs the story. It's about abusive worlds, love, and escape to freedom. It's about how short those moments of freedom can be, and how through fear, love can imprison as easily as it can free.

Any amount of help is so appreciated... I can't describe how grateful I am these days. Of course, all of you lovely contributors are welcome to a PDF copy of the e-book now for free. Just leave me an e-mail address to send it to when you make your contribution. (He smiles) You can expect an invitation to come rafting with me as well, I am sure!

Thank you all,

Joe