Chad Thomas Johnston - Nightmarriage

Nightmarriage

By Chad Thomas Johnston

Copyright 2013 by Chad Thomas Johnston

Cover Design by Chad Thomas Johnston

Scripture quotations marked (ESV) are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV ), copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked ( NIV ) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com . The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

Scripture quotations marked (KJV) are taken from The Authorized (King James) Version. Rights in the Authorized Version in the United Kingdom are vested in the Crown. Reproduced by permission of the Crowns patentee, Cambridge University Press.

Unless otherwise noted, scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (eLectio Publishing) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold, reproduced or transmitted by any means in any form or given away to other people without specific permission from the author and/or publisher. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return it to your eBook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

eLectio Publishing wishes to thank the following people who helped make these publications possible through their generous contributions:

Chuck & Connie Greever

Jay Hartman

Darrel & Kimberly Hathcock

Tamera Jahnke

Amanda Lynch

Pamela Minnick

James & Andrea Norby

Gwendolyn Pitts

Margie Quillen

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Drunk Dialing the Divine by Amber Koneval

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More From Life: 99 Truths to Understand and Live By by Christopher C. Dixon

Living to Give in a Getting World by Marcus R. Farnell, Jr. and Jesse S. Greever

Anabel Unraveled by Amanda Romine Lynch

The Sons of Hull: Book One of the Advocate Trilogy by Lindsey Scholl

Absolute Positivity: An Inspirational Story of Positivity, Prayer, and People by Karl B. Sanger

Hunger by R. H. Welcker

Striking Out ALS: A Heros Tale by Ethan D. Bryan

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The Woven Thread by Todd Oliver Stewart

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www.eLectioPublishing.com

Dedication

For the lovely ladies in my life, Becki and Evie.

NIGHTMARRIAGE Credits

Edited by Jennifer Harris Dault. For inquiries regarding Jennifers editing services, direct correspondence to .

Additional editing on Abra-Chad-abra!: Marital Magic, My Wife, the Black Hole, and Honeymoonwalking (to Jail) by Cathy Warner. As owner and host of B ainbridge Island Ink, Cathy offers a retreat on Puget Sound for writers, as well as writing services, editing, and workshops . Read more about it here .

Mixed media cover art by Chad Thomas Johnston. Special thanks to Brandon and Joanna Gillette and Meredith Holladay for contributing cutlery to the photo shoot. Additional thanks to my brother-in-law, Matt Damon, for teaching me how to layer images in GIMP (The GNU Image Manipulation Program) to achieve the desired results.

Interior art by BARRR (Jason Barr), Dan Billen, Ben Chlapek, Megan Frauenhoffer, Danny Joe Gibson, Mark Montgomery, and Darin M. White. Artist information appears in Appendix E.

Nightmarriage , Social Media, and You, the Reader

If you enjoy Nightmarriage and want to help eLectio Publishing promote it, consider yourself a member of our public relations team!

1. If you use Pinterest, visit Nightmarriage s Pinterest page and repin the book art on your boards. All images will direct traffic to a page on Chad Thomas Johnstons website featuring published excerpts, purchasing information, and more.

2. If you use Twitter, tell your followers about the book. Be sure to include this link and the hashtag #Nightmarriage in the tweet.

3. Post this link on your Facebook page for your friends.

Chad Thomas Johnston and eLectio Publishing thank you for your support!

Wedding Photo of Chad and Becki by Caleb Schickedanz.

(Note: If you are viewing this on a tablet or e-reader that cannot display color, color versions of images appearing in this book are available at http://pinterest.com/saintupid/nightmarriage.)

Authors Foreword: Tying the Knot

at Two Oclock in the Morning

***

When I first told my friend, singer-songwriter

Well, its not something thats going to land me in the marital doghouse, if thats what you mean, I replied. He responded with nervous laughter, as if he had no idea how to reconcile the title of the book with anything other than a nightmarish vision of marriage.

When I showed him the cover art, the blood drained from his face like water from a bathtub.

But dude, there are, like, axes and knives on the cover, he said. Has your wife seen this?

She helped me arrange the knives for the photo shoot, actually, I said. The books about my marriage, but its humorous in toneheartwarming, too, I think. Its not like Im airing our dirty laundry in public.

Of course, the public can probably see and smell our dirty laundry without any help from us. Even now, the mountain of dirty cloth diapers at our house dwarfs mighty Mount Oread here in Lawrence, Kansas.

The title may sound scary, but its just wordplay, I continued. Its a portmanteau of the words nightmare and marriage.

A portmanteau... he said, the color returning to his freckled face. I get it, man. A light just came on in my brain.

Sam teaches English as a Second Language (ESL) at the University of Kansas, so I assumed his students asked questions about things like idioms, portmanteaus, and slang on a regular basis. Apparently, I assumed correctly.

Around the same time, eLectio Publishing CEO Jesse S. Greever informed me of the companys plans to distribute Nightmarriage internationally in over eighty e-book formats. Upon hearing this, I immediately thought of another person who had been perplexed by the title of this collection.

My mother teaches an ESL course at the church my father pastors, so she often interacts with international students, including some who are not enrolled in her class. When she shared the title of the book with one such Iranian college student named Hadi, he said, You mean people get married at night in America, Holly?