I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to talk to you about my book and its progress. I’ve learned a lot about the publishing process the past three months, and there are really a ton of unexpected obstacles to tackle.

The good news: My book is written, designed, and approved by my publisher. In fact, they kinda love it (so I hope you will, too). It’s in the process of printing as we speak.

The bad news: My publisher sends full color books overseas for printing, which means it takes 6+ weeks for shipping back to Maryland. This means you won’t have my book in your hands until the beginning of March.

I’m feeling very guilty about this, and it’s caused me a lot of distress– especially because I have so many Kickstarter backers who didn’t bat an eye before donating to my dream project and are now waiting on me. I am so grateful for your support and patience in this process. The end outcome is going to be really great, and I know it sucks to wait but I hope you’ll find it was worth it.

Speaking of my Kickstarter campaign, I went above my goal for fundraising and I created “stretch goals” which are basically additional unofficial goals you make known to your backers. For example, “Okay, even though the project is fully funded, if we reach $X I will give all the backers X, Y, and Z”.

For one of my stretch goals, I offered to write down and burn any wishes you’d like me to do. If you were a backer and didn’t fill out your Kickstarter survey, then unfortunately your wish didn’t get read. However, I did receive a large amount of wishes to write down, read, and burn… and I recorded the whole thing! I have that for you to watch today.

The video is about 14 minutes long because there were so many wishes, and if it looks like I’m making a face at any point it’s because it was a very windy night and the smoke was going directly into my eyes and lungs. I considered doing a bloopers reel of just footage of me hacking into the camera and/or whimpering, but let’s start with your actual wishes first. FYI, there’s a couple cuss words in there so don’t watch it at work, although if you have time to watch a 14 minute video at work with audio then your boss probably doesn’t care.

Towards the end, my friend Katie (who graciously offered me her backyard and bonfire at her and her husband, Andrew’s, house) helped me read off some of the remaining wishes. (Other appearances include Charlotte, Andrew, Tim, Stephanie, Charlotte’s dog Indy, and Katie’s dog Gideon.)

All of your wishes have been burned and I wish you the utmost luck and good fortune with achieving your dreams.

And if you want to see a list of the wishes Katie and I read out loud, you can download the PDF. (They are not written in the same order they were read.)

If you are aching for some Uncustomary Love in your life and March seems like a lifetime away, you can pre-order my e-course on self love and happiness right now! You’ll have full access to it on January 15th, but if you buy now you’ll get a discount and trust me when I say I know the importance of a good discount.

PS – If you’re interested in running your own Kickstarter campaign, I wrote a 101 post on it.