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I posted the news yesterday that Don Miller’s next book will be out in early 2008 and will be titled Let Story Guide You. For a while now we were all under the impression that A Map of Eden, a story about his activist friend Adam Bybee, would be his next published work.

“Let Story Guide You” is actually the name of a lecture that Don has been giving over the past year. You can purchase it here i think, if you want to listen to it. ($9 is a bit steep in my opinion, though)

I followed that post up today with a quick little mini-interview with Don regarding his new book that we did over the email internetweb thing. here it is if you’re interested:

Bryan: Do you have an official release date yet for Let Story Guide You?

Don: Yeah, we are hoping to have it on the shelves on January 8th, which is of course very soon, so I am working pretty hard trying to wrap it up. It’s consuming my time right now. But it is a fun project, so that helps.

Bryan: Does the release of Let Story Guide You affect the future release of A Map of Eden at all?

Don: It does. I completed A Map of Eden and decided not to publish it. There were more than a few reasons, but in the end I did not feel like the book was ready. It needed another rewrite, which can take six months. I decided to put the next book on the front burner. I think that was good decision. A Map of Eden, though, will not see daylight for another few years. That was hard for me, but it was the right decision.

Bryan: Is it true that you originally wanted to call the book “A Story is Worth 1,000 Doctrinal Statements” but the idea was shot down by the publisher?

Don: Pure rumor. Actually, this is not a Christian book, as they say. It’s just a straight book about life and for people who want to live better lives. It is interesting writing a book that isn’t spiritual or religious in nature and I am greatly enjoying the experience. It’s increasing my faith in many ways because I feel like I am writing a book about the life God created, not unlike a botanist writing about plants. I find it a refreshing change for a moment.

Bryan: At what point did you realize that the “Let Story Guide You” lecture should be a book, or was it a book idea before it was a lecture?

Don: I was on a plane out of Portland and had the idea, then opened my computer and had the outline completed by the time I got to Washington D.C. I’ve never outlined a book before. Writers will understand when I say “this book was given to me.” And I feel that way when I am writing it, too. It just feels like the book is being given to me each day, and, well, I will take it.

Much thanks to Don for the timely responses. I’m excited to get my hands on this one. Who knows, maybe i can even finagle a pre-release copy??

Since the beginning of May, Erica and I have been training to run a 5K. Some folks decided to hit Vegas on 7/7/07, others tied the knot (in fact, that’s where we spent our afternoon), we figured we should spend our morning running 3.1 miles.

There were about 200 entrants to the 6th Annual Harrisburg Senators 5K race. We were a bit nervous since it was our first official race. Erica, Jake, and myself arrived at City Island in Harrisburg at around 8am and picked up our racing bibs with our numbers. Most everyone there really looked like runners, so we decided to start off the race near the back of the pack so we didn’t get passed by everyone out of the gate. Our goal collectively was to all beat 30 minutes. Personally, I was trying to beat my best of 27′00″.

We decided to run separately from the get go, so that we would each run our own race. I started out behind Erica and tried to pace myself without going too fast. At about the half-mile mark i picked up my pace and caught up with her. We talked for 30 seconds and then i took off again. I hit the 1-mile mark just after 8 minutes and kept my pace up. Running with other people actually helped me because it gave me a reason to speed up at times. I would pick up my pace for 60-second spots to pass 3 or 4 people and then slow down again to my normal pace. I slowed down a bit after the 2-Mile mark to save some energy for the final half-mile, and then gave it everything i had at the end. The cool thing about the race was that it finished in the ballpark, so i sprinted down the third base line and passed the Official time clock at the 25′52″ mark, my best 5K time ever.

Unofficially, i clocked the race with my Nike+ iPod thingamabob…though i was so excited about finishing that i didn’t remember to end my workout until about 10 seconds after i crossed the finish line. Here’s a screen shot of what the run looks like on nikeplus.com

Erica ran a 28′10″ and Jake finished at 29′10″. I think it was personal bests for all of us, which is a good way to run your first race. I think we’ll all probably continue running and look for another 5K to run later in the summer. After all, now we have a time to beat.

Happy Birthday Dad. 52 years old today!

Like I told you on the phone, you’re finally working with a full deck.

Hope you had a great day.

+ golf lessons have been going well. I’m starting to see some improvement at the range. Next time i play will probably be the Auntie Anne’s Tournament at Hershey Country Club next Friday. Really looking forward to that.

+ Excited to hear that Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds are getting together to do another live CD (DVD too!). I’ll be picking this one up on August 14th, fo sho.

+ Erica and I saw Ocean’s 13 last night. It was good, not great. I give it +1 cannarfs. Much better than Ocean’s 12, though that isn’t hard to do. Pacino was pretty good in it, actually. I think his performance turned a “Decent” movie into a “good” movie. (if you’re wondering what a “cannarf” is, and I’m sure you are, I’ll have to explain it on the blog here later this week. it’s basically a generic unit of measure that rates something against your expectations. If something was exactly as you expected, it gets 0 cannarfs. Worse than expected gets negative cannarfs, better than expected gets positive cannarfs. I’ll explain more later.)

+ Big Brother 8, our yearly summer guilty pleasure, starts in 2 days. Pretty excited for that. Looks like the twist this year is that they’ll have one houseguest doing things that America tells him/her to do. Viewers will vote online and by phone and he/she will be able to win cash by following through with her assignments. that should make for some good tv…but we’ll see.

+ In case you’re viewing this in a feedreader, I’ve got a new widget in my sidebar here. It’s a NikePlus widget that displays my run data, because i KNOW you REALLY CARE about how my running is going. Erica and I (and hopefully Jake too…if he doesn’t chicken out) are still planning on running a 5K in Harrisburg next Saturday. As you can see on my widget, my current best 5K is 26:57, which aint too shabby for a newbie like me. Hopefully i can best that mark on the 7th.