Will Fasting Raise My Ketones? | Lion Diet Carnivore & Alternate Day Fasting | Week 80 Roundup

Last week, I tried to get my ketones up by eating my TDEE each day. It wasn't terrible, but it still had problems. This week, I was determined to get that good DBR, so I opted for some more heavy fasting. Did that get the ketones to the level I was after? Or do I still have to do more?

Does This Bother You?

Like it does me?

On the freeways here in Houston, there are little electronic message boards that government officials can use to tell you about important things like Amber Alerts or the accidents clogging traffic further along your journey. When nothing like that is going on, they just put up little messages encouraging you to drive carefully. They often make cute little pun-ridden messages on holidays, or little rhyming messages when it's just a normal day. This particular message, the good folks of the city of Houston seem to love the most, because it's always up:

I can't see this freaking sign without reading it aloud and shaking my head. I always change the vowel on the last word to make it match the vowel of arrive, alive, and drive. It drives me crazy (makes me want to drive aggressive?).

Does it bother you like it bothers me?

Redesign

I just finished publishing my first novel, Sunny. When I was working on getting it ready, I did things my usual way, creating my own cover for the book, but I just wasn't sure what was best. I had a couple of options that I couldn't decide between. 

So, I asked Rish. He gave me his opinion, but it didn't satisfy me. I asked my daughter, who is the one who created the fairy picture for me in the first place, what she preferred. Well...she sat down at the computer and took over.

She thought it would be better if the background had a kind of gradient, and if the font was different, and if the title and the picture were embossed, and so on and so on. In no time, it was quite different. This was the final version.

Just the comparison of the two yellow backgrounds is enough to make me think, what the hell have I been doing all this time? I have no sense of design whatsoever.

I at least have enough of a sense of design to know that the new image is vastly superior to the old one I'd done. It got me wondering what my daughter could do if she took a look at my old covers for books that were already out. I thought Christmas Creatures was the most likely suspect. Here's what it looked like right now:

She went right to work again, and smoke started rising off the CPU as it tried to keep up with all her changes. She never does anything halfway, and after a long time messing with it, trying several options, and abandoning some ideas, she had a cover that now looked like this:

She also re-did the wraparound cover for the paperback and hardcovers for me.

Original:

And new version:

I bought an eBook about marketing self-published books, and one of the main things the author stressed was having someone professional design your covers. He harped on that over and over, bringing it up again and again across various chapters and sections. Looking at these two covers helps me to understand exactly what he was talking about. I can't afford to hire some professional to design my covers for me...but, I did sire one of those people. She seemed awfully amenable to designing covers. I guess I really need to have her sit down and do all my covers for me, it seems.

Last Christmas

Okay, day three of publishing this year's Christmas stories on Amazon.

I was talking with Rish on the phone the other day, and if I remember right, I quoted that goofy line from The Beach Boys "Little Saint Nick" song.

"Christmas comes this time each year," I said.

"Yeah, about that...we need to put a stop to that. I'm going to declare it right now. This is the last Christmas. No more of this coming back again and again, year after year," Rish said.

It was a throwaway joke in the middle of our conversation, but something about that really interested me. What if Christmas wasn't coming back next year. What if this was the last Christmas ever? What would that be like? And how could that happen? (And of course, the story had a built in title because of that hit Wham! song).

I was in need of a new story idea, because I was about to finish the story I was working on, so I put some thought in, and after skipping past the first few obvious answers, I found an idea that I liked. I started writing, and just a few days ago, I finished it up. Now it's ready for you to enjoy on this fine holiday season.

It's the story of Adrian who has a friend who has a strange talent. Every now and then, the guy stares off into space. Then his eyes roll up in his head and he pronounces some kind of prediction of the future. He's been doing it since he was in middle school, and the predictions always come true. Always.

Today, Adrian's friend performed that routine and said that this would be Adrian's last Christmas. Adrian's eyes bulged. Did he hear that right? Did his friend just predict his imminent death? What could he do? What would you do?

If that sounds like a good story to you, you can check it out over at Amazon. It's now available. I hope you enjoy it.

A Christmas Miracle

Here's another Christmas story that I wrote this past month for y'all to enjoy. I just got it published over on Amazon.

In this one, Eric inherits the sheet music to an old Christmas carol written by his great-grandfather. When he plays it, he finds that, not only is it a catchy, earworm of a song, but it has remarkable qualities. It's heals people of their maladies. Amazing! It's "A Christmas Miracle!" He can't believe it...except that the carol also has a dark side...

You can find it now on Amazon. Head over there and check it out...and Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve Eve

Here's a new Christmas story that I just published on Amazon!

This story is my attempt to do a Rish Outfield story. What do you think, does this sound like a story Rish could have written?

When Frank took a retreat to a remote Scandinavian village in search of peace and quiet to write his novel, he never expected to run into the mysterious and frightening Christmas tradition of the local residents. It's vile and and evil, and goes against everything that he believes. They say it's for his protection, but how could it protect him? And from what? Surely it won't matter if he refuses to participate...

So, if you're interested, it's now available over on Amazon. Check it out. It will certainly bring you some holiday cheer...or something like that.

Project Hail Mary

After a couple of dour Richard Bachman books in a row, it was nice to take a break and try something else. This time around, I grabbed Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.

I wasn't prepared for this book. It turned out to be one of those books that I loved so much that I just wanted to be reading it all the time. Of course, I do almost all of my reading via audiobooks, so binge reading an audiobook is a different prospect. You can only listen to an audiobook for as long as your mind is unoccupied. If you do something too mentally taxing, you will stop paying attention to the book and find that you are lost and don't know what's going on, but because you don't have to sit on the couch looking at a book, you will find something to do. I think it's just generally more difficult to pull off.

I found that I was able to listen to my audiobook while formatting Sunny & Gray for publishing. That wasn't too much for my mind to concentrate on both. So, that was nice. I was able to get two things done at once.

The book was completely delightful, and not at all what I suspected it was going to be at the beginning. I won't talk too much about the plot to avoid spoiling it, but it's high-concept stuff (as my screenwriting teacher, John Lee, used to call it) and there are some very touching moments that will bring tears to your eyes even though the events are only playing out on the stage of your mind.

I loved The Martian by Andy Weir. Now, I've loved Project Hail Mary. I'm going to have to get Artemis, the one book he's done that I haven't read, and go after that one soon. This guy does good stuff.