i look bad

And that makes 20. Thanks, Scott Lynch

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Actually, 21, but I was going to wait until I dropped at least 20 pounds before I blogged about it. Continue reading

Overdoing and Underdoing.

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So I’ve been doing the Livestrong calorie/fitness counter and it’s been fine so far. I get a little hungry but nothing that makes me want to yell at my kid or whatever.

But yesterday got a little nuts. We made a run to the Staples, the boy and I, for various supplies (note to my agent if you’re reading this: yes, we bought a new phone), walking a mile and a half to get there.

After lunch, my wife came home from work early and we went to the local park. We hiked to the beach, then hiked back, over an hour and a half, which is a long way considering our various problems with our legs. We hopped over to the bus stop, all sweaty and exhausted, to wait for our ride home.

Except the driver picked us up, took us one stop, and told us he was taking a 30-minute break. We could take another bus if we wanted at this next stop, but since we weren’t going downtown that was worth fuck-all to us. We had no choice but to wait until 9pm for the bus or walk all the way home.

Let’s just say that I arrived home and realized my calorie intake was a negative number for the day. Not just below my goal: below zero.

“Oh my god,” I said to my wife. “I can eat anything I want.”

Mmm, grilled cheese sandwich with mayo and hot peppers. (840 calories)

Anyway, today will be a recovery day.

In unrelated news to my physical health but closely related to my mental health, I’m going to start an internet fast on Sat the 10th of September.

That’s right. I’ll be logging off and staying off.

I will check my emails once a day. I won’t be blogging, or reading my LJ friends list, or posting earworms on Facebook, or goofing around on Twitter. I’ll check email and allow my dropbox files to do their thing, then I’ll turn off my modem.

It’ll be a useful way to re-examine my internet habits (the way I used to when I did actual food-type fasts) and hopefully up my productivity. It’d be nice to have a little extra family time, too.

Anyway, I’m going offline to run some errands. Don’t forget there’s a Twenty Palaces spoiler thread to check out.

Not new glasses. New frames though

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It turns out that my broken frames aren’t made any more, so I had to have my old lenses fit into whatever frames they had that would hold them.

I think I lucked out there.

New frames for my glasses

This is how you can tell I’m cool

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Yesterday I was making the rounds signing copies of my books and, as I was walking to my first B&N, I pushed up my slipping glasses and heard a tink!

And my glasses fell off my face in two pieces. The metal bridge finally succumbed to fatigue and snapped apart.

How can you tell I’m cool?

So cool, Brewster.

Hell yeah.

By the way, none of the B&Ns in town had copies of Circle of Enemies in stock. Hurricane Irene delayed them, I’m told. Can I tell you how happy I am that the biggest bookstore chain in the country won’t stock my books in a great many of their stores until at least a week after it’s come out?

This is how happy I am:

So cool, Brewster.

Anyway, my wife “fixed” them by wrapping a wire around the nose bridge and hot-melt gluing it in place. That’s better than tape, I guess? I think she’s mad at me.

Quick Friday post

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1. I have promised a thread for spoilery discussions of the Twenty Palaces books. I have not forgotten this promise.

2. Today is the day I travel around Seattle (by bus!) signing book stock in stores. Fun! Okay, not. Actually, it’ll be a good time to do some reading and thinking about item 3.

3. My agent got back to me with some notes about A Key, An Egg, An Unfortunate Remark. They seem very straightforward but will require a bit of fixing to address. Must turn on brain.

4. My agent has also shamed me into replacing my phone. Let us not speak of this further.

5. The Livestrong calorie counter is making me rethink my devotion to kielbasa and peanut butter.

6. Booster Gold is a terrific character.

7. My email inbox has been exploding for weeks. I’m not sure what to do about it, but I have to do something.

8. Last night was date night for my wife and me. Unfortunately, our sitter never showed (don’t know why) so we ended up cooking some quick, sorta-crappy food and then rushing out to Elliott Bay Marina to see “Cirque du Sail” a couple who travel around the world on their sailboat, with their kids, and pay their way by doing acrobatic shows in the rigging for donations. Last night was the final Seattle show but they’ll be in San Francisco in a few days. They’re very good. Check it out if you can.

9. One the way to the Marina last night, my wife turned to me and said “Thanks for coming to see this thing with me.” I said: “Hey, it’s Date Night! We just had bad food and now we’re going to see some unlikely entertainment. The only difference is that we’re dragging the boy behind us in a little red wagon.” Date night, everybody.

10. Time to get out of here and start signing. Have a great holiday weekend, Holiday Weekend People.

An auspicious day

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Today is supposed to be a Pokemon league day, but the boy woke up in the middle of the night with a bad cough, and I don’t take him when he’s all coughing on people. At this point, though, he seems fine, so we’ll be heading out.

In other super-fun news, I’ve started tracking my calories with Livestrong as of today. Reading Scott Lynch’s recent post on the topic, I accepted that there’s really no more excuses for putting it off. The writers who’d taken control of their fitness/eating all seem to be quite a bit younger than me–and that will make things harder–but it’s not like I’m going to turn 30 again.

If nothing else, I expect recording everything I eat will be an opportunity to re-examine my food habits. I used to use fasts for this, but my wife hates fasting, so what the hell.

Quick note: I’m not looking for advice regarding weight and weight loss.

Can’t be a hero without cubes

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I read comics in the trade collections. Sure, that puts me months behind the main stories, but the truth is I don’t have the money to spend on them, and I’m only casually interested in the storylines. There are very few comics I genuinely care about, far fewer than I read.

Anyway, one of the comics I’ve been half-following is SECRET WARRIORS, which is a sort of spy/superhero mashup, with a pack of unknown superpowered non-heroes as the operatives and Nick Fury running it all.

It’s fun, it’s shaggy in a pleasing way, and unlike some comics the story isn’t an incomprehensible mess. It also has a hero named Druid, who I liked because he has pseudo-magical powers and because he’s a fat guy.

It’s pretty rare to see a fat hero in comics. I’m not going into the history of it, but when Blue Beetle fell into a depression and put on a bunch of weight, all he needed to do was beat up an obnoxious guy and snap out of it. Easy, right?

Well, Druid was a powerful character who didn’t have full control of his powers (magic!) and who was a little insecure because he made mistakes. See, I like him even more. Then, at the end of the previous trade, Nick Fury kicked him off the team.

In the trade I read over the weekend, we pick up his story: he’s gotten the boot, goes home, sits in a chair and is all “Now what?” Then he goes home and finds one of Fury’s agents waiting for him (a guy who’s a human head on a robot body, but never mind). Fury’s buddy is one of those grizzled old commanders who doesn’t take any nonsense, and he quickly informs Druid that with spies and Nick Fury, there is no “out.” The agent sits Druid down with a stack of papers and tells him to fill out the test, it’s the same one he’s been giving to his raw recruits for decades. Then this happens: (I’ll put in a cut for the scan) Continue reading

5 Things Make a Post

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1) I have three things left to do before I send Twenty Palaces to my agent: clean up some formatting issues like chapter headings, spellcheck, and check every instance of “him” in the script to see if I should have changed it to “me” when I went changed the book from a third person pov to a first person pov. So incredibly dull but I’m really catching some embarrassing errors, like “I jumped to his feet.” Oh well.

2) Here’s my Norwescon schedule:

Friday: Whatever I want.
Saturday: Whatever I want.
Sunday: Stay home and hang out with my son.

Hah! I’ll be there as a regular attendee, mainly to look around and see whatever this is to be seen. It’ll be my first convention, so I don’t expect to know anyone. If you’re going to be there and you see me, please feel free to say hello. I look like this. Also, I have a terrible memory for faces and names, so don’t be offended if it takes me a couple of seconds to “place” you.

3) Seattle is enduring the coldest April on record. I’m sorta sick of it.

4) Revisions on Twenty Palaces have taken control of my life. I can’t wait to send them off, if only so I can go back to responding to comments promptly (as opposed to passive-aggressively complaining on my blog, like this post) and reading books. Honestly, I can’t wait to spend some hours every day reading.

5) This NY Times article (only available if you haven’t used up your 20 articles/month) isn’t the first time I’ve heard that fidgeting has a powerful effect on weight gain and loss. I’ve been using my standing desk more often (thanks to the Topricin my wife just bought me) but I attribute most of the weight I’ve lost recently to the fact that I’m getting the sleep I need. I still have a long way to go, of course.

Five Things Make a Friday Post

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1) Quick question: Should I do another August book giveaway to promote Circle of Enemies? I’m not sure it did me any good last time, as far as drawing in new readers, but it was nice to give away cool stuff.

2) My wife and son are spending the day on their bikes, riding the Burke-Gilman trail as far as they can go. That means that, instead of spending the day writing at a Starbucks and the library, I’m going to work at home, sans interruptions. Kitchen floor: swept.

3) What have I been working on? I should be able to let you know very soon.

4) Taxes are nearly done. At this point it’s about printing them, e-filing and transferring the money to the correct account. Also, I was a complete idiot about them this year. Here’s why: I’d been stressing over the bill. Now, we had the money in savings, but I was stressing over it because it would cut quite deeply into our cushion. It was only last night, late, that I remembered that I had a CD with no early-withdrawal penalties set aside specifically for taxes–and it has triple what I need to cover the bill. Phew!

5) I’m not gluten-free anymore. I did lose a little weight, but it was mainly because we didn’t have food available when I was hungry. Me with low blood sugar? Not a good husband. Not a good parent. Besides, it’s unsustainable and unhealthy. Also, it didn’t stop the allergic reactions on my face. (This is an FYI: no diet advice, please.)

Quick post

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I’m about to get back to revising The Unnamed Project but I thought I’d drop in here for a quick post.

I have great news! … which I can’t share yet. Yes, I know, I’ve become one of those tiresome writers who talks about all the awesome things they’re not allowed to talk about. This one won’t be too much delayed in announcing; the contracts should be all signed and ready very soon now.

Gluten-Free! For the first few days I was doing pretty well (and dropping a few pounds) but fell off the wagon. I put the pounds back on and my face is inflamed again. Annoying. I also tried out a few of the apps folks recommended but they were unsuitable for one reason or another.

I tried the free version of the Livestrong app, for example, but apparently there’s no way to put a food into it at quantities smaller than their minimum serving size. Apparently, everyone who has maple syrup eats a quarter cup of it at one go; no one ever just adds a tablespoon to their yogurt. It’s also annoying and I’m not sure if the paid version fixes this flaw.

Galleys for Circle of Enemies! are done. I’m going to make copies of them and then ship they back to Del Rey later this week. There are sections I wish I could iron out–not too many, but some–but I still think this book is the best I’ve ever written.

Science Fiction Conventions! I’m going to one. Norwescon, in this case. I bought a membership over the weekend because I figured I’m supposed to be going to Readercon later this summer and even (gulp!) be on a panel or something, so I should probably go to one as an audience member to see what they look like. I realize they’re not the same sort of convention, but what the hell. I have until the end of April to remember where I left my extrovert mask.

iPad! Finally, a gadget my wife will actually use.

Ebooks for 99 cents! Boy has this been bouncing around the internet for a while. Personally, I’m sure the price of ebooks will drop below the current prices, but I’m not so sure they’ll fall all the way to 99 cents. This indie author has an interesting take on book pricing, mainly because she isn’t interested in the 99 cent market. She doesn’t believe those readers will follow her to other, higher-priced books, and also that they’re kind of a pain in the ass.

Combine that with some other readers out there who say they avoid one buck books because they assume they’re crap, and you see a case for higher prices. It’s pretty interesting and things are changing quickly.

Christ, didn’t I say this was supposed to be quick? Time to work.