November Anklecast Up on Patreon

I got sick a little over a week ago, and lost my voice. I expected that it would come back, but here we are, the last day of November, and still no voice. I had to give up and put out an abbreviated episode of The Anklecast in which I present this month's story, but do almost nothing else.

I make sure to never miss my episode for my Patrons, even if unforeseen complications arise. So, the story is there, but I spared you the pain of listening to my scratchy voice as I struggled my way through a long post-episode chat with Rish Outfield. Instead, I just give you the story and get out. Hopefully, you like it. And, if you're not a member of the Patreon group, I'd really love it if you joined us. You can jump on board for as little as $1 per month. When adjusted for inflation, that's the price of a single piece of gum from the machines at the grocery store entrance when you were a kid, so you could definitely swing it. Come on over and join us! The cat will be waiting for you there...

Decor

I worked on it pretty diligently for the last few weeks, and all of my Christmas stuff is up now.

I finished up the last of it yesterday. I'll have to start wowing you with individual posts that show the close-ups, but that's for another day.

The Wind Through the Keyhole

After finishing up The Death of Kings and getting back on track with my reading, I was eager to get another book to read. I was talking with Rish a few days ago, and he was mentioning how surprised he was to realize that, even though he knew all about the book, he'd never actually read Stephen King's Duma Key. He's a huge fan of Stephen King, as am I, and he's pretty much read it all, but this one had escaped him somehow.

I confessed to him that I'd never read Duma Key either, and I thought maybe I ought to rectify that too. I got on the Libby app to check it out, but there was a line and I had to put it on hold. While I was at it, I figured I should go through the list of King's books that I hadn't read, and put those on hold as well. I almost always love Stephen King's books (aside from Cujo, which I've tried to read twice, but never managed to finish), so they probably wouldn't derail my progress (unless I tried Cujo for a third time).

I went through and placed holds on more than a dozen books, and the first one that came up as available was The Wind Through the Keyhole, a Dark Tower novel. I read the Dark Tower series through to the end, but Stephen King went back and added this novel into the middle of it in 2012, so I was able to revisit my favorite characters again in an all-new adventure.

Although it didn't turn out to be quite that. There's actually precious little time devoted to Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Oy. The story takes place in between books four and five, and our heroes are force to take shelter from a crazy storm that blows through Mid-World and kills pretty much everything in its path that isn't sheltered away very securely and warmly.

While they shelter, Roland decides to tell them a story from his past. He weaves the tale of the time he was sent to Debaria to catch a skin-man, which is a shape shifter akin to a werewolf but that isn't limited to just one creature. It can turn into various things. Weirdly, in the middle of this tale, Roland tells another story (we're going deep here. This is the Inception of The Dark Tower. It's a story within a story within a story), this one a tall tale or a myth about Tim, who has to deal with the loss of his father and save his mother from troubles that arise by going on a long quest.

It was an odd bit of framing to make our way through all these nested stories, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. Rish, I gather, is not a fan. Probably because there's no real consequence to the tale, since Roland and the others aren't really a part of it. I didn't mind it. I found it fun. 

Not only that, but I managed to make my way through it in only a few days. I stayed home sick from work last Wednesday, and while home, I decided to put up as much of my Christmas toy decorations as I could. I had the audiobook playing the whole time that I worked, and I burned through a huge portion of the book in that one day, only doing a tiny amount before on Tuesday and after on Thursday to finish it. That's always cool to jam through a full-length novel so quickly. It feels like an accomplishment for some reason.

My only gripe was that the finale of the story was kind of weak. Gunslingers are just to capable with their shots, so there wasn't a lot of drama about it, and, of course, since it's a prequel, there's no actual danger to the characters. That's the ultimate problem with prequels. We know damn good and well that the character is going to survive just fine.

It's already time for another book. This time, Stephen King's book that he wrote as Richard Bachman came up as the next thing available. So, in a few, I'll be back to talk with you about Roadwork. I thought I'd read all the original Bachman books, but this one doesn't sound familiar at all, so we'll see how it goes.

Packaging

My kids went to the farmers market this past Thursday. While they were there, they found a person who was selling eggs from their hens. They knew how much I love eggs from chickens who are allowed to get out and roam in the pastures and eat their actual diet instead of being stuffed in boxes stacked in a building and fed solely GMO grain, so they bought me some. They sent me this picture to let me know about them.

Three eggs? That seemed strange. I've seen eggs sold by the dozen, and in a few very rare occasions by the half dozen, but never by half of half a dozen. My daughter told me that they sold them in such small amounts because they didn't have a big farm operation. Instead, these were their own personal chickens, and they were just selling the extra eggs they couldn't use themselves.

That was fine. Three eggs is better than no eggs. That was for sure. I didn't think any more about it until the next day when my wife asked me if I saw what the girls got me from the farmers market.

"The eggs? Yeah, they texted me to tell me," I responded.

"Wasn't that the cutest thing you ever saw?" she asked.

"Oh, that. Sure," I said.

No, she wasn't talking about the fact that they bought me some eggs. They've done stuff like that before. She wasn't talking about anything the girls did. She was just talking about that little three egg package. You don't really notice it when you look at it in the picture above, but if you see the egg package closed, this is what it looks like.

Yup. The three eggs come in a heart-shaped package. Isn't it just darling? Just thought I'd share.

Trying Hard and Then I Get Sick | Lion Diet Carnivore & Alternate Day Fasting | Week 77 Roundup

It's week one of being intentional, really trying, making this the most important thing for me. I want to make it to my goal, but the universe had something else in store for me. Before the week went far, I came down sick. What now? Can anything be done while trying to recover from a cold?

Death of Kings

I had a run of several books in a row that just turned me off. They didn't appeal to me in any way, even though I had reason to expect that they would. I was upset by this, and wondered just what the deal was. As usual, I figured it was probably me. There was probably something wrong with me. If everybody else liked these books, but I couldn't even keep my interest for a day, then I must be defective in some way.

I gave up on reading for a few months...to be fair, I gave up on writing and many other things during that time too. I was in a general funk. I have managed to pull myself out of that funk, though. I finally tried picking up some books to read again, and started with Isaac Asimov's Prelude to Foundation. 

While it wasn't a barburner that I couldn't put down for a moment, I still enjoyed it, and managed to make my way through it without having the time on my library book run out on me before I finished it. That was a big accomplishment for me after the last few books I'd tried.

Once I finished Asimov, I played it safe. I remembered one of my favorite series of books, and decided to get the next one of those. Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Stories book six is called The Death of Kings. I knew that one would appeal to me, so I grabbed that.

These books are just fun. They won't be for everyone. I think they're very male specific-type stories. They tell the tale of a medieval Saxon warlord living in the time of Alfred the Great, and detail his wars and conquests. They're mostly fictional, but there are snippets of true history woven into them as well. Most of all, though, they're fun. 

I always like them, and this time was no different. This time, I worked my way through the book quickly, in just a matter of days. Now I feel like I'm fully back in the swing of things. I can read again without getting totally bored and looking for something else to do. Maybe I just have to be more careful with what I choose to consume. It's okay to try things out now and then, but don't go overboard right away, because you just might cause problems if you do.

My Yearly Reminder

It's that time of year again, so I guess I need to remind you that I have an awesome collection of Christmas stories assembled for you to make your holiday bright.

This year, all the various versions are now available. You can pick it up in eBook, paperback, hardcover, and even audiobook. Check it out on Amazon. It's best to pick it up soon, I think, to make sure that you can enjoy it during the Christmas season.

Just thought I'd let you know. Carry on...and happy holidays!

Prelude to Foundation

Way back in the last century, a young Big Anklevich got a three book omnibus edition of the Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov from the Science Fiction Book Club. I read the whole thing, which wasn't even all that long...particularly since those SFBC omnibus editions always had the tiniest margins in order to pack as many words per page as possible. Less pages meant less printing costs.

I really enjoyed the Foundation Trilogy, and had it on my list of favorites over the years, but I never bothered to read any of the later books that came in the series. The first ones were written in 1951, 1952, and 1953. Asimov didn't come back to them until the eighties. That smacked of a sequel that nobody wanted, which we are plagued with these days in every big series from Star Wars to Indiana Jones to The Matrix to Scream to anything else that Hollywood thinks that they might be able to squeeze a few more shekels out of. So, I never did read any others.

Then Rish's friend Jeff moved to Germany. Jeff was a huge speculative fiction book reader, and he had a big collection of books. Rather than pack them all up and move them to Europe or keep them in a storage facility, he chose to just give them all away to anyone who wanted them. Rish only had so much room to accept books from his friend, and he took all of his favorites, but he also knew that I would love to have more books to add to my own anemic-in-comparison collection, so he grabbed boxes worth of books that he thought I might enjoy.

I thanked him, and used many of those books to fill my shelves. I have this aversion, though, to having a book on my shelf that I've never read. It makes me feel like a fraud. Here and there, I set out on a new effort to read the stuff I have up there so that I can say that I have read them all. That's how I found myself reading Isaac Asimov's Prelude to Foundation.

It wasn't a magical return to a galaxy far, far away for me or anything, but it was pretty good. I find it to be an interesting thing that Asimov was doing in the end of his life. He was famous for a few different science fiction concepts, and he was weaving the universe together and uniting them all into one. 

My copy of Prelude to Foundation started with an author's note from Asimov that informed me what the proper chronology of his books were. The robots and Foudation went together, and he gave a nice delineated list of what was first, then second, then third, and so on. The funny thing is that hearing that list made me really want to read them all in that order now. I feel like I need to get to each and every one of them. I don't suspect that I will, but you never know.

Prelude to Foundation felt almost like a series of short stories stitched together, which shouldn't be surprising, considering that Asimov has written tons of short stories. He may well think in terms of short stories always, like Rish Outfield seems to. I like how he pulled it all together in the end, though. I won't spoil it in case you haven't read it yet, but the twist at the end was fun, and I liked it. 

Maybe I ought to try watching the TV series. I think I watched one episode of it, and didn't feel all that entertained, but maybe if I gave it another chance while I was in more of a Foundation mood...

ATM

When I was a kid, every now and then I would see the University of Texas A&M's football team playing a game on a Saturday. I would look at them and wonder why they had ATM on the side of their helmets.

ATM, I knew, stands for Automatic Teller Machine. That's where my parents would go to grab some cash when they needed it for something. It was confusing how it worked for their logo. I realized that what they had still worked, but it was just more confusing than it should be. 

They probably would have been better off just going with something else, like a picture...except their team was the Aggies. What the hell do you use to represent an Aggie? A dude in overalls? Although, as bad of an idea as that sounds, Nebraska actually has that logo already.

I guess, maybe they could have a bull or something like that...except that it is pretty much the same as the college just up the street in Austin.

So, there's no way they're doing that.

I guess the only change they might have gone with that could have made it better would be to make the A&M smaller and put it beneath the T. Instead, we get the ATM look.

Now, it suddenly means more than it did when I was a kid in Sacramento. In those days, I had no connection whatsoever to that school. Now, it's the closest major institution to where I live, unless you count the University of Houston, which is pretty big too. I see Texas A&M stuff all the time. People are wearing shirts and hats, they put up flags, the whole works.

The other day, I saw a sticker on a car that actually makes it all come full circle, though. This one:

It's one of those stickers where you proclaim how proud you are of your student that you have at a certain university. This guy is some student's dad. I saw that, and my memories of the ATM logo came flooding back, and I couldn't help but laugh. When you have a kid in college these days, you tend to be paying one hell of a lot of money for that privilege. Thanks to poor decisions by our government, college tuition has risen twice as fast as inflation in the last twenty years, and there's nobody who needs money more than a college student. So, that sticker is appropriate for either interpretation of the logo. Yeah, he is the dad of a Texas A&M student, but I bet he also feels just like an ATM dad.

It's My Christmas Thing

Back in April, I did a post about how shirts with Sasquatches on them had become my thing. I particularly like this shirt that had the inspiring message double entendre included. (Is it a double entendre if it's not sexual? Or is it just a double meaning in that case?)

Well, I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that, while we were at the store the other day and the kids stopped to look at Christmas ornaments, they pointed this one out to me.

It's got the similarly fun double meaning as well. Every stupid Christmas movie is all about belief in Santa Claus, but what about Bigfoot. He needs belief a lot more than Santa does. Maybe I need to get this ornament for my tree. After all, it's my thing...

Naughty Or Nice

Which were you this year, boys and girls? It's important, because what kind of Tic Tacs you can have depends on your answer.

We saw these the other day. Tic Tacs in lump of coal form that taste like sour cherry for the naughty kids, or white candy cane flavored ones for the nice kinds.

I don't know why, but I thought it was kind of cute.

A Restart, Time To Be Intentional | Lion Diet Carnivore & Alternate Day Fasting | Week 76 Roundup

I had an absolutely terrible week filled with nothing but missteps. I decided to change up my video this week, skip the reports of my daily failures, and instead reexamine my process and change it up in a way that will hopefully produce results. I've been floating along for too long. Time to get out the oars and start rowing. I'm going to be intentional about this from here on out, until we meet in One-derland.

Patreon Address for November

We're well into November, so it's past time for another Patreon address. After the fiasco of what happened with archive.org, I've decided to put this one onto the normal feed again so that people who don't subscribe to Patreon will know that it exists, but this will be the last time. Next time around, this will be a total Patreon exclusive. Check it out!

I talk about my most recent project which I just finished recently, and update you on my progress on my goals. And you can cheer me on in my quest to become someone who makes an actual living writing books.

As always, thanks to Kevin McCleod at incompetech.com for the music.

You can find the episode on the podcast feed, or right-click HERE to download the episode. You can just as easily just push the play button on the embedded player below, and listen right here and now. Enjoy!

 

'Shrooms

When I was out walking on Sunday, I came across this area that was filled with mushrooms. I decided I should take some pictures of them, because...well, mushrooms are kind of cool, and also, Rish Outfield is always using them in his Lara & The Witch story covers. I figured I could get some good shots, possibly, and he could use them if he decides that he wants them. So, here they are, my mushroom shots.

Any you like?

Halfway Update

Yesterday was the 15th of November, and November is one of the months that has thirty days. So, we are officially halfway to the end.

At the start of this month, I told y'all about my plans for what's left of 2024. I adjusted my schedule from a birthday-to-birthday year to a calendar year. I had 316,095 words for the year so far, and I challenged myself to take it above and beyond anything I'd ever done before and make it to 400,000 by the time we were all singing "Auld Lang Syne."

That was going to take some Deadpool-style maximum effort on my part to achieve. I was a little more than 80,000 words short of that mark. With only two months left, I'd have to get 40,000 words in both of those months. I was determined, though, so I pulled on my boots and got to work.

First of all, I finished out the last four days of October with 4,934 words, taking me over the 320,000 mark. 80,000 would therefore be enough. I'd done 40,000 words a few times in the past year. In January, March, April, May, and June I'd achieved the 40,000 mark. It wasn't beyond my grasp. However, I was going to have to up my goal. In each of those months, my writing goal was at least 1,250 words. I had originally planned for my November goal to be just 1,000 words a day, but I was going to have to go beyond that.

So, I grabbed my lunch pail, and got to work. We're halfway through that month now...am I keeping up? Well, here's my chart for November so far.

Yup, I went above and beyond 1,250 every day...except one. That was the day I finished writing Lazerfist Saves Christmas and I didn't have anywhere to go with my writing to get the other 75 words I needed, so I just let it ride, and figured I'd make it up on other days.

And, at  the 50% mark for the month, I'm at 21,091 words. Double that, and I'll be at 42,000 by the end of the month. So, I'm in good shape to make it to my required level for this month. That's pretty exciting. 400,000 here I come!

Physical Media

When I talked about my goals for October, I lamented that I was only able to get the eBook version of Wizards and Angels published before the month ended. The paperback and hardcovers still hadn't come to fruition. Well, I'm here to report that they are now ready. I worked my butt off, and the hardcovers are ready for you lovely people.

If you've ever wanted a collection of paperback or hardcover books from B.D. Anklevich, now is your chance. Head over to Amazon and grab your copy! This is going to be the last volume of the short fiction collection for a while. It's time to move on to publishing novels. Coming up next is Sunny & Gray, Book One: Sunny. As long as I can manage to keep my act together, that should also come out this month. See you then.

Fat Squirrel Week

Have you ever heard of Fat Bear Week? It's this thing they've been doing for a few years, where the bears of Katmai National Park in Alaska get photographed as they're in the process of packing on pounds for their winter hibernation. They put photos of the bears up against each other, and people vote on which bear has done the best job getting fat to prepare for the winter.

Well, I've been out walking on our greenbelt trails recently, and I've noticed that the squirrels are trying to participate in this game as well. Each and every squirrel is really doing its best to prepare for winter. I see them all the time, and they're not usually this huge. These guys are all ready for winter to come.

I tried to get a picture of one to demonstrate, but the squirrels don't really want to sit still around a human, so this is the best I could get.

It's not a great angle to demonstrate the chub. You may be able to see some at the upper arms there, but that's the best it gets.

I think it's kind of funny, because most animals have this fatten up for winter instinct. We humans have it too. We used to need a big belly full of fat to make it through the winter, so we would pig out every fall to fatten up. Ever wonder why all the food holidays are lined up one after another in the fall?

Of course, these days, seasons don't mean anything to us. You can eat a banana in America...a country where bananas don't really grow...at any time of the year, fall, spring, winter, or summer. No need to fatten up for the winter, since food is readily available any time. Sadly, we all still have that instinct, so we usually fatten up in the fall anyway...then keep fattening in the winter and so forth.

I'm excited about this winter, because it's the first time I've had two winters in a row that I can fit the sweaters that I bought back when I was skinny, but never wore much, because I got fat. Wish me luck that I can keep that going, and avoid the instinct to fatten myself for winter, and I'll wish you luck as well.

Those Special Words

I just finished my most recent book the other day. I made it to those most special two words.

Right now, I'm calling it "Lazerfist Saves Christmas," although it may change to more of a subtitled thing, like The Adventures of Simon Lazerfist: Saving Christmas" or something like that. It's my second Lazerfist book (although the first one still needs a serious rewrite to be any good), so I suspect that it may be a series of tales before all is said and done.

It's always exciting to make it to the end of a novel. This one is really short. Only 58,893 words. So, it's very much like one of those old Louis L'Amour books that were itty-bitty things. I've heard from many self-published authors that short books is the way to go. That way you can keep publishing frequently, and never leave your audience alone long enough to forget about you. I don't know about that. I didn't try to make it short. That's just how it came out.

It's exciting, though. I finished another one. Now I'm going to go celebrate a little, and then get started figuring out just what the hell I'm going to write tomorrow.

Did I Really Get It Together? | Lion Diet Carnivore & Alternate Day Fasting | Week 75 Roundup

I said I was going to be really good, bear down, and apply myself at the end of last week's show. Did I really do that? Did I do the baselining? Did I get to eating right? Or did I just eat a bunch of cheese and give myself serious digestive issues? Could it be both?

Anklecast 72 - The Frayed Ends of Sanity Available for All

The new episode of The Anklecast is now finally available over for everyone. It took a while for archive.org to sort itself out, but it looks like they're finally there, so I can upload to them again. That makes it so that "The Frayed Ends of Sanity" can be posted to the podcast feed, so you can listen to the episode now. 

If you were a member of my Patreon, then you could have checked it out almost two weeks ago. This was my October episode, after all. If you're not a member, you should consider it. Who knows when archive.org may go down again. Despite any interruptions over there, the podcast will continue on Patreon, so you can always find it there. So, you know, it wouldn't be a bad idea to take that plunge and sign up.

This time, we have the story of Greg, who is going through a nasty divorce, which is the worst thing happening in his life...until the day when his phone starts ringing and whatever is on the other end of the line has the power to take over his mind and drive him toward thoughts he's never entertained before. How far will the mystery caller take it? You can only find out by listening to the end of "The Frayed Ends of Sanity."

Afterward, Rish and I talk about Metallica song titles, Broken Mirror events, and doing things differently for a change.

You can find the episode on the podcast feed, or right-click HERE to download the episode. You can just as easily just push the play button on the embedded player below, and listen right here and now. Enjoy!

This Still Counts, Right?

I was at Five Below yesterday, and we saw this stuff on the shelf there.

This still works for the carnivore diet, right?

I posted the picture on my carnivore Facebook group, and most people understood that it was a joke, but several of them didn't notice the word "gummy" on the labels, and started talking about nitrates and processed meat, and suggesting I'd be better off skipping out on it. 

It's not the first time that I've had that reaction when making a joke on Facebook. There's always a certain percentage of people who don't understand that it's not serious. I feel bad when that happens. Not sure if I did a bad job with the joke, or that it just doesn't work in print...I guess this is what comedians are talking about when they say they are trying out new material. They judge the audience reaction, and refine their wording to make it funnier.

Anyway, on with the countdown. The baloney and bacon wasn't the only weird gummies we saw at Five Below. In fact, it wasn't even what caught our attention. The first thing that we noticed were these atrocities:

Not quite sure why, but these ones gross me out a lot more than eating gummy baloney or bacon. I need to see the joke in these things better. I'm like the guy on Facebook that missed that my post was a joke. I suppose it would be fun taking these to school and making them up like they were crackers and cheese and then handing them to a friend to try.

Or what about this?

I think that's a real tortilla with gummies inside of it for the burrito. Maybe not, but I don't know.

What about this one?

My daughter liked this one. She said I should have bought it for her and brought it home to try. Would Canadians eat this with ketchup? Would The Barenaked Ladies eat this with fancy dijon ketchup?

They had the craziest crap in gummy form there. You'll never guess what else I found there. Look at this one!

What the hell? What kind of crazy person would make a gummy in the shape of a bear? That's craziness, I tell you. Craziness!

Playlist-ening

I know this is a pretty old thing, and that most people have been doing this for years, but I made myself a playlist. My kids each have a playlist of favorite songs that they listen to, but recently, we changed our music service, and they had to go through and remake their playlists on that one. I decided I would make myself one too. My daughter insisted that I get cover art for it, so she found a cool picture on Pinterest, and sent it to me. Behold:

Rock and roll, baby! (Although my playlist has all kinds of things from Big Band Swing to 80s Pop and so on).

I'm an old Gen-Xer, so I listened to cassette tapes growing up, then finally graduated to CDs about the time I was graduating high school and heading to college. I like to listen to albums. Kids today seem to listen to songs. They hear a song they like and add it to their playlist, but they don't do what I do. They don't hear a song they like, and then go to the album and see if the band (or artists, I suppose, since bands barely exist anymore) has other songs that they also like.

That's how I've always listened to music. I get into bands, and do a full deep dive into their catalog. Sometimes, their catalog isn't very deep, and taking the dive doesn't get me anything. Instead, I find that there's just the one song I like. Other times, I find a new band that joins the list of my favorites, and I listen to their music for months on end.

Now, however, I'm trying out this playlist thing. I made something called My Big Playlist (no pun intended), which has all my favorite songs on all of my albums that I've accumulated over my unbelievably long life...seriously, how does someone even get as old as me and still manage to be alive?...and I just tell my phone or Alexa to shuffle it for me whenever I want to listen to music.

I've actually really enjoyed it. It's really varied, so any kind of song might pop up, but each and every one of them is good. There's not a one that I dislike. I find that I'm listening to music more recently than I have in a long time. I wonder, however, if it will prevent me from finding out about new bands and stuff in the future. That would be a bummer if that happened. 

I don't really know how to discover new artists these days. The radio plays the same old stuff on the stations that play my kind of music. The top-40 stations play unlistenable dog vomit. I suppose there's probably playlists that are curated by the music services that play new stuff from my kind of music. I guess I'll have to make sure to do that sometimes. I don't know. It's a brave new world for me.

I have a lot of work to do on my playlist still. I've only made it through the Hs so far (although there's other stuff in there, because I was getting stuff at random at first). The playlist, however, is already 945 songs totaling 63 hours and 54 minutes. If I hit play, and let it go, it would be almost three days before the same song would come up again, and I'm not even halfway through the alphabet.

Three Vampire Weekend Available In Audio Now!

It took a while for them to finally approve it, but it's here! Three Vampire Weekend is now available on audio at Audible.com. Check it out!

I had to make a new cover so that it was square, like it has to be for audio, so this one gets one more vampire added, to go along with Thor, the cat, and the missionary vampire. This guy is the farmer vampire from "Servants of the Master."

Making covers is always fun, so I can't complain. I hope y'all like the audiobook. I worked really hard on it last month and managed to get all of "The Elephant in the Room" done on time. Then, of course, Audible took almost two weeks to approve the book. So, it's only available now. But check it out and enjoy. I hope you love it.

Again, find it on Audible. I think, if you use my link, then I get a bonus if you start a new membership. So, if that's your plan, click that link. Oh, here's one for the UK: Audible link for UK and here's one for Australia: Audible link for Australia and here's one for Canada: Audible link for Canada. Sorry, Gino, they don't make one for New Zealand. Do they not do Audible out there? I can do one for Germany or France, which seems kind of weird, since the book's in English, but whatever. I guess you could use it to help you learn to speak English better, right? Try to listen and then repeat or something...

All-Time Chart

I've been thinking about doing this for a while, but I always found better things to do. I should have kept it that way, but the other day, instead of doing worthwhile work, I spent hours compiling an all-time word count chart.  

It looked something like this:

Back in 2011, for the month of September, I pledged to write 500 words a day for the first time. While not achieving it perfectly, I did manage to at least keep up with it and I averaged 500 words a day.

I remember feeling really good about myself when it was over, and being really upset with myself later when I let it slip away and failed to make it a habit. Over the years of talking about wanting to be a writer, I held onto that success in my memory, and eventually, I started trying to reenact it.

The next time I put it to work was in February of 2017. Rish jumped in with me, and we both started developing some good habits. I upped my goal to 1,000 words a day in March, kept it going through April and a little bit into May. I was having my best year of writing ever. Then we moved, and I let circumstances get in the way and it slipped off, but the seeds had been planted. 

I flailed about, sometimes writing and sometimes doing nothing for while before once again, getting the daily word limit goal applied in October of 2019. I really caught on in 2020, and made that best year ever of 2017 look utterly insignificant. I still didn't quite have a handle on it, though, because I quit when I hit my goal, and couldn't manage to pick the torch back up.

This past October was the time when I feel like I made it happen for real. It's a lifelong habit now, I think. Not only that, but all of this progress has made it easier, and given me a lot of confidence. I think I'm getting pretty good at this.

So, back to the purpose of all of this. I've been tracking my word progress for a long time in one way or another. So, I decided to compile it all into one place. I made a section for every year that I have any idea of how many words I wrote. Many of them were just  that I'd written a story during that year, so I took its word count and added it to the bunch. Others was taking the charts that I'd made for the year and compiling them.

I suspect that to most people it would be totally lame, but for me it's kind of a visual representation of my progress that makes me smile. 

Another thing that I did that I find super interesting was to take all the stories that I've written, and label the dates that I worked on them. That's a bit of a walk down memory lane for me with each of them.

The most interesting part of all is the chart that compares the totals from each year and adds them up into a cumulative total. Check this out:

That is an interesting string of numbers to me. You can see the increase...it's bumpy, but it does keep going up. There were some really bad years, when I got as many words for the whole year as I get in a week now...then again, there's many years that are skipped altogether, because I didn't write a damned thing. 

Then there's that last number: 1,227,188. That's right, folks. I'm a damned millionaire...at least when it comes to words. I have a million of those to my name. A lot of people say that you have to write a million words of crap before you become a good writer, so I guess I've finally arrived at that level. Of course, that means that all the stuff I've been sharing with you for all these years is crap, so I don't know if I subscribe to that theory. I think even some of my old stuff is pretty good.

My goal for 2025 should thrust me above 1.5 million.  It neat to think about...at least for me. Y'all probably stopped reading a while ago, if you ever even clicked on the link in the first place, but at the very least, it gives me energy and excitement to keep at it. So, I guess I will.

Year Ender

I suppose, after all of the talk I've done for this year about my goal for writing, that I have to do a post about this. I'll be a little bit brief, because I will be talking about this in my Patreon Address this month, of course. 

I said last time, that everybody would get access to my Patreon Address just that one time and then it would be for Patreon subscribers only, but then archive.org went down, and that post never went out. So, I'm going to try it again, if I can. I still haven't been able to log into my archive.org account, so I don't think we can upload stuff to it yet. If that does become available again, then my Patreon Address will go out to everybody in a timely manner. If not, then I guess you gotta get on the Patreon to hear it.

Anyway, I'm not here to talk about archive.org or anything like that. I'm here, because my one year for my writing effort just passed. I made the goal on my birthday in 2023. My goal was to have my best year of writing ever. Up until this year, that would have been the year from birthday-to-birthday in 2019-2020. That gave me the goofy goal of getting 304,475 because my total for 2019-2020 was 304,474.

Maybe I don't need to talk about reaching the end of this year, because I already talked about beating that goal back in June. After that, I took a big, ill-advised break in July and August, and had to recommit myself to writing in September. I gave myself a new, augmented goal to attempt for the rest of the year until my birthday arrived in late October. Now, I was trying to hit 380,000 for the year.

How did that go? Well, here's my final word count for the whole 2023-2024 birthday-to-birthday year:

Yeah, I hit the 380 goal. I didn't have a lot of room to spare, but I managed. So, my new best year ever total is 381,054. If I want to improve, I have to beat that.

So, what am I doing now? Taking another break and disappearing for months on end? No!

Instead, I'm trying to up it just a little bit more. First of all, I'm doing something I probably should have done a while ago. I'm dumping this whole birthday-to-birthday thing. No more hyphenated years. I'm switching to a standard calendar. And I'll start with this year. I'm taking everything that I've written in 2024 so far, and continuing from there. So, my year looks like this right now:

You can zoom in and see the info on that if you want, but let me show you the important part.

Okay, that's my total for what we've had of 2024 so far. And, as you can see, I gave myself a new goal. I wanted to beat my best year ever, so I'm going to outdo 381,054. I won't do it stupidly this time around by setting my goal at 381,055 though. Instead, this time I'm taking it a a ways above that. I want to see if I can't manage to get to 400,000 for 2024.

As you can see, that means that I have 83,905 words to write in two months and four days. That means I've got to kick it up a notch. I wrote a thousand words a day...aside from my birthday, which I took a holiday from writing...in October. I'll only get a little over 30,000 words for the month doing that, however. What I'm going to need is 40,000 word months in November and December.

That is not out of the realms of possibility, though. If you look at the totals of the months from 2024, I got more than 40,000 words in January, March, April, May, and June.  I know I can do it. I've just got to work a little bit harder. In January, I set my word count goal to 1,250 per day. I think I'll have to do that again. And, of course, I'll have to do it every day of the month, no breaks, probably not even Christmas.

So, we're off. Can I get 80,000 words in the final two months of the year and set a new all-time high benchmark? It'll be tough. It'll be a stretch for me to achieve that, but it's definitely possible, and I believe in myself enough to say that I can do it.

Once I crush that goal, then we can look at what even-higher benchmark I can shoot for in 2025. 500,000? That sounds like insanity, but maybe...

Still Losing? Or Stalled Out? | Lion Diet Carnivore & Alternate Day Fasting | Week 74 Roundup

I've had several good weeks in a row. How long can that go on for? Can it keep progressing at this breakneck speed or does a person's body have to stop to take a breath. Well, watch the show and see how it went.

Ugh! Time For The Switchover

It's one of my least favorite things, but it leads to one of my favorite things, so I guess you have to take the good and take the bad. You take them both and then you have the facts of life.

Yup, that's what I was doing this weekend. That is my study, half-denuded. You can see that there are plenty of holes in the shelves, because I took the Halloween decorations down. Once I can get them packed away safely and stuffed into the closet again, I'll open up the other one of those plastic totes and start unloading my Christmas decorations.

I know, you're not supposed to decorate for Christmas until the day after Thanksgiving, but if I wait that long, I'll only get a week or so with the stuff, because it takes me forever to get it all up. I've got to get started now, or else I will just get despondent and say it isn't worth the effort and never have any decorations at all.

Oh, here's something that I think I forgot to ever include in any of my Halloween decorations posts. I forgot to take a picture of this Halloween decoration and show it off. 

This is a Lego house that my wife gave to me a while back. Okay, it isn't Lego. It's fake Legos...also, it's miniature fake Legos. These things are tiny. They're probably half the size of regular Legos, but it feels like it's more like 1/3 the size when I try to use my fat fingers to assemble the thing.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. I certainly do. I love Legos. Fake or not.