Music: Even with his busy travel, performance and teaching schedule, when in Nashville Johnny finds time to work on writing music for his upcoming new record and spends much time in the studio laying down all the tracks himself.

Column: In the spring of 2006, Johnny began writing a new monthly educational column, "Here's Johnny", for Musician's Hot Line Magazine. This column features lessons, hot tips and recommendations tailored to the magazine's guitar playing readers.

Children's Book: Johnny has written an inspirational children's book designed to help children believe in themselves and achieve their dreams. Drawing from his own personal experiences, Johnny incorporates the love of Nature he learned growing up in rural Maine with his own challenge finding his way as a legally blind person in a sighted world. Johnny has created a rich cast of lovable and imperfect woodland characters who help each other find their place in the world. Not only has Johnny written the text but also he has, over time and suffering migraines headaches to accomplish the task, brought the characters and their woodland home to life through beautiful illustrations.

Promoting Music Education:
Johnny has threaded promotion of Music Education throughout his work. Whenever possible, Johnny builds teaching dates into his tour schedule and has, by now, taught at all the major music schools in this country and many abroad as well. This year Johnny was invited to be a speaker to an entire middle school student assembly in Maine. Johnny accepted and provided a motivational speech for them using his own life experiences. Johnny's Jan 07 column in The Musician's Hot Line Magazine advocates for the importance of public school music education programs by explaining the importance of these programs in Johnny's own life. Johnny wrote this column after learning about Music For All Foundation, an organization that works, among other things, to raise money to promote and preserve music education in public schools. Johnny is pleased that PRS has donated a Johnny Hiland Model PRS guitar for auction in January during the Winter NAMM Show 2007 to raise money for the Music for All Foundation.