Time to LAUNCH!

The Rending Cauldron Kickstarter campaign is out there.

Prayers appreciated.

This was a crazy run-up to the launch of my crowdfunding campaign for my upcoming novel, The Rending Cauldron. Partly my fault, partly that darn law that belongs to Murphy.

My ADHD paired with my utter incompetence in front of a camera had me dragging my feet for far too long before I got to work on my video for the Kickstarter’s home page. I had a script all written out, and even a few little storyboard thumbnails. And still I sat on those.

Then the upheaval of September 10th hit, and all of the sudden, my script felt hollow. I figuratively ripped it up and pounded out a whole new idea, one that was much closer to the heart of what I wanted people to know about this novel. Drudgery turned to novelty, and I set up the camera. I probably did about 25 full or partial takes of the script, but the more I watched what I’d filmed, the more I despised watching myself yap.

Ugh, I’m not looking right at the camera because I’m trying to see notes behind it.

Yikes, I flipped my hair out of my face…AGAIN.

Why can’t I just talk normally? Why am I so monotone?

Video stills are so flattering!

And so on. Aggravated, I quit out of Premiere Pro and went to bed.

The next day, I hit the laptop with a new plan—make more of a book trailer. Pull the key phrases from my monologue and pair them with images. OK, I’ll still talk a LITTLE at the end for the sake of being personal, but I strove to make that as short as possible. This looked promising.

The next hurdle: music. Fortunately, I had amassed a ton of Adobe Stock credits for video images and clips, but in the royalty free music…let’s just say after a couple hours of searching and listening, I found something “not terrible.” But SO generic. I laid it into the video rough cut and slumped in my seat.

I couldn’t take it. After a quick jaunt over to my nephew’s composer website, I shot him a quick text: Hey, uh, could we work something out for me to use one of your portfolio tracks for a video I’m making? (When he heard the stock music, I think he probably spit coffee across the room.)

But the amazing answer: he didn’t allow me to use the track I was asking for—he wrote a WHOLE NEW piece for the video. I am truly spoiled knowing people who can whip up a 2-minute, full instrumental trailer soundtrack in about two days.

This all would have been a couple nice days’ work at my desk…

…BUT…

…before the music was ready, and before I was done roughing out the images, I had to leave for a round trip drive from my home near Philadelphia to St. Louis. (This appointment with the 2026 Realm Makers conference hotel popped up semi last minute.)

A little welcome gift we got at the hotel for doing a business visit.

My procrastination was laughing like a little imp as I wished I could video edit in the car without having a motion sickness disaster. But it was OK. We’d be home by dinnertime Saturday. I could finish the video, upload it, and breathe easy during our trip to the Renaissance Faire planned for Sunday.

But remember Murphy? He and his blasted law showed up at 5:30 am on Saturday morning and killed the fuel pump in my car, right as the valet brought the car up from the hotel garage for us to jump in and go home. While Scott scrambled to get us a late check out and tried to find a mechanic that could take the car on a Saturday morning, I sat on the hotel room couch and buried myself in edits.

The car got finished in a surprising 6 hours, so after all the shenanigans of finding a mechanic, a tow company, repairs, and an early dinner, we were ready to leave St. Louis.

At 5 pm.

900 miles and 13+ hours later, we rolled up to our home on Sunday morning, a little delirious, but alive. (And yes, we still went to the Renaissance Faire. I wasn’t going to waste $80 worth of tickets.)

This has all been a very long-winded way to say that providence has played a major role in a lot of the preparation to release this new novel. Delays over the past 4 years of writing the book have made it more relevant as a morally challenging story, releasing into a culture that needs truth now more than ever. The alignment of the whole weekend, even with a car issue, still got us home safe, accommodated our Ren Faire visit with our son, and left enough time for me to finish video edits WITH custom music.

I’m looking forward to discovering what else God will do in his divine providence over the next 28 days of crowdfunding. I’m grateful for all of you who are along for the ride, and I hope the unfolding of The Rending Caudron’s story has a lot more fun adventure from here, and a lot less Murphy’s Law.

(See you over on Kickstarter! Thanks in advance for considering backing the new book.)