I Wrote a Book: Under the Long White Cloud
Introducing My First Book - Now Available in Print and eBook
I’m excited to finally put this book, Under the Long White Cloud, out into the world. Under the Long White Cloud is a full, book-length memoir about my volunteer missionary service in New Zealand.
Both an eBook file (for reading on your phone or tablet) and a paperback version are available from my webstore. You can also find the eBook on Apple Books, and both the eBook and the paperback on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.1
If you buy through my webstore, you’ll get a 10-30% discount compared to buying on one of the other major platforms. To sweeten the deal, use code FROMTHEDESK to get an extra dollar off when you buy from my webstore.
If you want to read a sample, you can download a PDF of Chapter 2 below.
In this post, I want to explain more about the book, why I wrote it, and how it will be different than you might expect. To change things up, I’ll structure it as a Q&A.
What is Under the Long White Cloud about?
Basically, it’s a memoir about my missionary service for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in New Zealand. I got my assignement as a senior in high school, the same year the age of eligibility changed to eighteen-years-old for young men. The book starts with that announcement from our Church Leadership and more or less runs linearly through the two-years I was in New Zealand.
Is this book only meant for members of your Church?
Absolutely not. From the very first paragraph I wrote, my whole intention was that this not be a book for Latter-day Saints. While I think Chruch members will enjoy it and relate to what I was experiencing, I wanted to give other people, religious or not, the chance to see what a mission was like.
Even today, I talk about my time in New Zealand a lot, including with my friends and coworkers who aren’t members of my Church. Sometimes I think they’re afraid that if I get talking about my mission, I’ll get too religious and start preaching to them. I’m hoping this book gives people outside my Church an avenue to learn a bit more about a significant and unique religious experience feeling like they’re actually meeting with a missionary.
Why write about missionary work? Aren’t missions pretty common and even overshared, especially in Church circles?
Yes, I completely agree. Latter-day Saints talk a lot about missions, and many of us served missions. So what does a book about missionary work add to the conversation that hasn’t already been said?
I think there’s value to looking at a mission in it’s entirety. We’re so used to talking about missions in anecdotal fragments, focusing on either the really good or the really bizarre parts of missionary work.
When you look at a mission holistically, there’s a lot more substance and growth than can be expressed in short snippets. In my case, I think of a mission like a coming-of-age story.
Because it’s a book, not an article or Church sermon, I had to think a lot about narrative, plot, imagery, a.k.a all the things that actually make for a good book. As I analyzed my mission from this lens, it was clear that there were some overarching themes worth exploring. Part of literally wanted to see if I could make a mission exciting. You’ll have to read the book and tell me if I succeeded!
New Zealand also worked well as a location for a book. It’s small enough that I got to visit and live in really different parts of the country. So what this book ended up as is a sort of travelogue/bildungsroman.
When did you decide to write Under the Long White Cloud?
When I was ordained a missionary, my local Church leader, Tim Welch, told me to be diligent about writing about my experiences and promised that my posterity would find it benefical. While he probably meant I should keep a good journal, ever since I returned home from New Zealand, I’ve felt an urge to make more formal record and actually put it into a book format.
Prior to 2020, I had been digitizing my missionary journal by literally typing out what I had written down each night. I started doing that more earnestly once the COVID-19 pandemic started. Once it became apparent that COVID wasn’t going away, I decided to start on a book version.
I’ll add, too, that I’ve always wanted to write a book for as long as I could remember. My feeble attempts at fiction haven’t amounted to much, so I figured I’d start by writing about something I really knew and remembered. Hopefully it’s not the only book I ever write, but it was the perfect subject to get me writing, and as I mentioned, making this whole thing into a book length memoir was a fun challenge.
What was the writing process like?
The pandemic gave me so much time to write that I got the first draft done within six months. I woke up every morning, copied journal entries, went for a run during my lunch break and thought about what I was going to write, and then spent a few hours every night writing.
Editing took a lot longer, and came in waves. I can’t describe how frustrating it was finding a random typo on my seventh or eighth pass through a chapter.2 I worked with a friend of mine who is a professional editor to help me pull the story together. I also shared it with a few friends and family members to get their opinions.
The whole time, I’ve been on the fence about how to publish this. It doesn’t have a lot of commercial appeal, but I still spent about a year sending it off to different book agents and publishers to get their thoughts. That didn’t amount to much, though one New Zealand book publisher read it in its entirety and gave me some good encouragement to self publish.
After that interaction, I spent a few more months editing and now here it is!
If you made it this far in the article, you deserve a little vulnerability. I suppose that’s one common thread within everything I write, an attempt to expose a piece of myself.
To be brief, I’ll only say that this publishing process is fairly uncomfortable. Not only is the book fairly uninhibited, but asking people to pay for something I’ve written feels equal parts foreign and fraudulent.
The thing I heard from every book agent and publisher I talked to was “this isn’t a very commercial project” meaning, we think it’s an interesting story, but who would pay for it? I didn’t have a good answer for them, and I still don’t have a good answer now. Mostly, I hope this makes for a unique insight into my life for my kids and grandkids, and a nice gift to some of the friends and family I made in New Zealand to let them know how much I love them.
Regardless of whether you read the book or not, thanks for supporting From the Desk!
The book will be available on Google Play Store soon. An audiobook may become available. If you’re interested in an audiobook, shoot me a note.
There are likely typos remaining in the book. If you find one, send it to me, and I’ll refund you 10% as a token of gratitude!
Darn computer voodoo!
“meadow” was supposed to be “media,” and “its” is a possessive, not a contraction, and so should not have had an apostrophe.
Give me a pencil, a “Big Chief” tablet, and a typewriter over this digital format any day…… …..I’m too old for this digital doo-doo……(71).
I’m not adept - yea, verily, quite inept… - at using this new digital meadow, having grown up using number 2 pencils, “Big Chief” writing tablets, and manual typewriters. As such, I had this comment mostly done, but I apparently touched the wrong thing, and it disappeared. I don’t know where it went. Maybe you’ll get this comment and a partial….
That being said, I’m 1/2 way through your book, and enjoying it. It’s good social commentary about New Zealand and it’s people. I only have a “National Geographic” knowledge - something about Kiwi birds and penguins…..
It’s a cool book!