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.

Ain't Wastin' Time

Only two days past Halloween yesterday, and I was at work recording football games for the sports guys when this commercial came on during one of them.

Please excuse the crappy pictures, but I tried as quickly as I could to get my camera out to get a shot before the commercial ended. Yessir, that is the John Travolta as Santa Claus commercial. Already running while Halloween's corpse isn't even cold yet.

What's in your wallet?

Well, if you're anything like me, there ain't a damn thing in your wallet. Inflation done emptied that thing out. Thanks for asking, Santa.

Do I Really Need To Add Lars Ulrich?

Having Ollie's nearby may not be a good thing after all. I've been spending a little too much money there lately. Case in point, the other day, while I was chatting with Rish on the phone, I was doing my usual trip to Ross. Ollie's is nearby, so it's now been added to my list of places to stop. I went into the Ollies, and to my surprise, among the usual cast off figures that nobody wants were four Figrin D'ans from the Star Wars Black Series. That's the six-inch scale figures. It's mostly what I collect for display. All the 3.75-inch collecting that I do is only for the Ankletown Station setup.

Four of them! That's a lot. That's more than half of the band, and now I could get them all for half of their original price. I wanted to, but had decided against collecting a set of the Modal Nodes, because getting seven figures would be prohibitively expensive. I've got three kids on our car insurance. We can barely afford our electric bill and don't get me started on the prices at the grocery store. But, if the figures are half price...maybe?

I debated it for a while, (They were $10 a piece. That's $40, and I seldom spend that much money at once on toys. I shop at Ross for a reason. Oh, and I did mention how everything costs way more than it used to? I sure haven't gotten a big raise to make up for that disparity, that's for sure), however, I finally gave in and bought the four guys.

They're pretty cool. Each one comes with three instruments, so even though they're identical, they can pass as different guys in the band...they're aliens after all. Who can tell one Bith from another, right?

They look pretty good all lined up blowing their space-horns.

I have an awful lot of leftover instruments though.

I guess I could probably use them in designing stuff on Ankletown Station. So, I'll find a use for all of this.

Now, there's two different figures in the Black Series Modal Nodes. They're both identical figures, but one comes with the three horns, the other one comes with the three larger instruments, and is sold as a deluxe figure. That one's name is Nalan Cheel. 

All I need is one Nalan Cheel, which is selling for a lot more than those Figrin D'ans are going for on eBay right now. I could get one of him, one or two more Figrin D'ans, and have the whole band. That's going be at least as expensive as what I've bought so far. I did run out to the other Ollie's that opened up on my way to work the next day, and they had no Figrin D'ans. So, I may have to pay full-price...or worse...to get the others. 

Is it worth it? Maybe I won't bother. Those four get the point across, right? Star Wars band. Awesome! Who cares about the drummer and bass player and keyboardist in a rock band anyway. All that matters are the lead guitarists and the singers. Quick, without looking on Google, tell me the name of the drummer and bassist on Van Halen...or AC/DC...or Aerosmith. Pretty much the only way a drummer gets his name out there is by being an asshole like Lars Ulrich or by having a huge schlong and giving it to Pamela Anderson like Tommy Lee. I don't see Nalan Cheel managing that kind of fame.

Wizards and Angels Now Available In eBook!

New short story collection available now! It's Wizards and Angels: The Short Fiction Collection, Volume Four.

This will be my last short story collection for a while. I've used up all my short stuff, and it's pretty much all available and out there now. From here on out, I'll have to start publishing my novels. 

This one has a really good mix of stuff. It includes nine stories: From Another World, The Shortest Ghost Story Ever Told, Undo, Unfortunate, Dr. Claw, Pre-owned, Long-Term Memory, Black Angel, and Digital Wizards. A few of those are from many moons ago, such as "The Shortest Ghost Story Ever Told" or "Black Angel" and some of them are from this very year such as "Pre-Owned" or "Digital Wizards." "Digital Wizards" is a novella, and takes up the lion's share of the page count. Rather than describe each story separately, I just linked to the post where I released them in their standalone versions.

So far, Wizards and Angels is only available as an eBook on Amazon. My next order of business is to get the other formats ready for publishing. The paperback and hardcover will certainly be next, and over the next two months I will get the audio recorded and edited. So, depending on what your favorite format is, you can get it now or expect it to be a long shortly. I'll do a post when each format comes online as well so you won't miss it, don't worry. I hope you enjoy.