Two Fun Articles

Two different articles caught my eye this morning as I perused the Journal. The first was a review by Eric Felton of a new book called Euphemania by Ralph Keyes (here). Anyone who knows me or reads this blog even semi-regularly will know that I love the Wall Street Journal each morning primarily for the book review article in the Op-Ed pages. I love Saturdays because the Weekend Journal section is all about books. I've yet to find a daily publication that provides as much information and reviews of books as the Journal. Today's review of Euphemania is probably the most scathing review I've yet read.

In Ratatouille, the restaurant critic Anton Ego, voiced by Peter O'Toole, has an epiphany regarding food that he relates to his readers by discussing how fun it is to write scathing reviews. The review of Euphemania does not come across as having been fun to write. It isn't even all that fun to read. It's a decimation of the book by Felton, and based on his arguments it seems that it was well deserved. I came away thinking that Mr. Felton had put more time, study and research into his review than Mr. Keyes put into his book. Well worth a quick read. Quite memorable.

The second article is a bit cringe worthy. Room Service for Running Shoes by Kevin Helliker (here) discusses how higher end hotels are now offering running togs to include socks and shoes to guests who don't wish to tote around workout gear when they travel. I don't know about you, but when I traveled I didn't mind taking my own running gear and would not quickly give that up to wear anything the hotel might give me. At one point in the article Mr. Helliker states the hotel's case:

"Westin's program is part of a larger move by the hotel industry to beef up fitness offerings and cater to the frequent business travelers who tend to use hotel gyms the most. Fairmont Hotels & Resorts recently introduced a gear-lending program with an MP3 player and Adidas shoes and apparel. It, however, is only available to Fairmont's most-loyal guests and, in most cases, requires a small fee. Hotel companies have also recently put more resources into their gyms, transforming many of them from cramped, windowless spaces jammed with old treadmills into spacious centers stocked with high-end equipment, flat-screen televisions and free yoga classes."

It's this second half of the quote that should be most telling. I hate going to those small fitness rooms. Usually if there is even just one other person the place is too crowded. If hotels want to attract more people to their fitness areas and to return stays just increase the size of their fitness rooms, don't give out used gear.

Memorial Day Book Review or Becoming Thor

No, not about the new movie coming out, nor about my getting swoll off the new P-90X workout video. Nope, this has to do with the Vince Flynn book I just finished, Memorial Day.

One must know that it won't be Dickensian when one picks up a Vince Flynn novel. No David Copperfield, instead the protagonist is Mitch Rapp. Just the name alone tells you alot about the thriller that about to come. But I'm sorry to say the further in the series I've gone the worse the writing. I found nothing worth highlighting in the whole text. No interesting passages, no clever turns of phrase and no fun vocabulary. The only thing he did well was describe a raid in Afghanistan, but as soon as that was over, all downhill.

Still, I didn't give up on Page 1 as I did with Brad Thor. Maybe the title is a bit of hyperbole. Maybe he's not quite Thor-ish yet.

Now I Remember Why I Hate Ruck Marching

As another update in my workout series (see HERE) . . . Well, it's May 1st, which means I have started the USAA Ruck Marching Challenge to help stop soldier suicide! 

I remember now how much I hated ruck marching. Slow, long boring, . . . ugh! But, it was different and fun to a degree. Wow, does a fella ever have some time to think on a ruck march? 

DISC in High School

One seminal transformative learning moment in my life was the experience I had immediately following a large merger between two companies. We got the chance not only to perform a DISC personality profile on ourselves, but also see the results and discuss the results from the entire leadership team. I've written about this servarl times on this blog (see HERE). 

What did I find out? Why was this such a transformative moment? 

Not Just Knowledgeable but Compelling to Read as Well

 I waded into Rex Bonds Shredded Secrets: 7 Cutting Edge Nutrition Secrets You Need Even If You Are Over 50 with some degree of trepidation, but I was happy to see that not only was it well written, deep, and well organized, but is in line with what I've read so many times over the years.

I have a deep history of diets both with and without success. As child I was over weight. I have been working out in gyms since 4th grade. my first fun run was in 5th grade. In high school I was able to lose 80 lbs in one year by diet alone. When I got too skinny, protein and supplements helped me get into shape enough to be an athlete in college. Years in the Army as a SpecOps warrior also helped me learn how to workout, lift weights, and diet. For years after my time in the military I worked out with a Navy Seal PT bootcamp and helped others workout and counseled them on how to stay in shape. I've bulked up, slimmed down, run, jogged, lifted, and cross fitted all through the years. Now that I'm approaching 50, I was drawn to this book due to the tag line " . . . even over 50."

Unlike many fad diet books I've read over the years, Shredded Secrets is down to earth, solid, firm, and terrific advice. It's not easy, it's not fast, it's not even guaranteed for everyone, . . . getting shredded. But as someone who may never achieve it but always tries, I can say that if I followed all the advice in this book, as diligently as Rex Bonds advocates, I would be successful. 

A great book for anyone taking dieting seriously. 

Constancy Vs Consistency

I heard from and saw my old friend again this week. Couple morning's ago and there she is. She reminded me of the importance of consistency. Not constancy, but consistency.

She may not be a constant friend, in fact the most I see her is once every few months, but it's consistent like that. I can count on seeing or hearing from her once every six to eight weeks. I can count on seeing her whenever I workout with my group. She's very consistent like that. She is steadfast and I know what to expect and she delivers without fail.

This is what great friends produce, consistency. You come to expect the same thing from them and they deliver. We had a guy named Baldwin in our unit who you could never count on. The entire time in the Army as a private you are constantly proving yourself. Why? Because you want to establish trust between yourself and your leaders and your squad. It's that trust that develops over time and you can build on.

Baldwin not only failed to develop that trust fully, but he undermined the trust completely. So we cut him away. In airborne operations there is one thing you never want to be, a dragged jumper. Exiting the door is one of the more dangerous moments of the jump. It's at the door that anything can happy. A piece of your uniform can get snagged, a loop of your static line could get caught, anything. When that happens you become a dragged jumper. The only thing you can do as the jump master is cut that person away. That's what we did to Baldwin. Once he undermined his squad's and his platoon's trust to a point where he could no longer be trusted, we had to cut him away. It was his lack of consistency that lead to his being cut away.

What's this have to do with writing? Well, you'll remember I'm in the midst of some character development. It's fun to take qualities that are irksome in real life, or even admirable and take them to the next level (more on that in a future post).

Calvin Coolidge wrote about persistence (see my post on it HERE). Consistency is just as important in my view. I've been writing consistently for over a week now and it's great to see progress on so many fronts. It's that consistency that helps us achieve, not constancy. Constancy can give out and fail. Consistency is the value that we should strive for. Roller coasters are fun, but not if they go on indefinitely.

It's obvious that in my life, as proven by seeing this old friend, that I value that consistency more than constancy. In writing too that seems to be the best to achieve results.

Been Some Time

I realize that it has been a long while since I posted here, and for a long time this blog was turned off (unbeknownst to me) but, in my defense there was a setting that wasn't correctly clicked that stopped the site from being made public.

That being said, I've been doing quite a bit of writing in my down time. Not a ton, but quite a bit (naturally "quite a bit" is less than "a ton" but more than "a fair share"). What have I been working on? Well, it depends on what I'm reading.

When I read a Frederick Forsythe, which I'm about to do, then I work on my thriller novel about the mercenaries who are out to safe the African elephant orphanage.

If I'm reading a first person mystery/thriller, like the Dick Francis novel I'm reading now, then I work on my next mystery novel, this one revolving around the NFL and our foster kiddo, Anthony (see here).

If I'm reading anything else I work on that romance I've been plugging away on. That one is probably the most polished of the bunch, but also, strangely, has the furthest to go.

What's been most frustrating is that just the other day, when I'm on the cusp of going fully cloud capable, my dang window gets busted out at my workout and my computer is stolen. That same week, still reeling from that, my hard drive with all my backups craps out. I've lost a good 20 thousand, perhaps as much as 40 thousand words toward that NFL story. Not a huge loss as it was still such a rough draft, but still now I have to go back and rewrite all of it.

I find it interesting that I don't care about that loss more. I think it says something about my writing process and my drafts. I believe I read that Dick Francis worked on just one draft. He might do one or two edits, but his first draft lead directly to his final. He was definitely a planner. Robert B. Parker who wrote the Spenser novels did the same. I know I read that somewhere.

I am a "pantser" . . . I write by the seat of my pants. I'm beginning to believe that may not be the best use of my time and effort. Perhaps with a bit more planning I could knock out better novels, quicker. Then again, if I was to have it stolen from me again, I'd care a whole lot more than I do now.

Now that I'm fully on the cloud and the only thing that could wipe out my drafts is an electro-magnetic pulse that fries tons of servers all over the world, I don't see myself losing anymore drafts, so perhaps this is just the kick in the pantser I need to become a better planner.

Morning Miracle

I am in the midst of reading a book called the Morning Miracle for Writers. It's a self-help book cum writers craft book much like the ones I used to read and review. I've hardly started but so far I'm taking this sucker to heart. It's primary theme of course is to wake up early not only to write but to get a jump on the day. I've started following it's teachings and trying out the five key steps to increasing my Wake Up Motivation Levels (WUML).

First - Affirm to yourself before going to bed that you really will wake up early. This goes along with the philosophy that the last thing you think upon going to bed will be the first thing on your mind when you wake up. Not a hard one to master, but very effective.

Second - The old standby; set the alarm clock far away from the bed. I've heard this many times before, I will now live  by this maxim.

Third - Have ready a full glass of water and drink it when you get out of bed. Not bad for the biology and not hard to do.

Fourth - Brush your teeth first thing. Nothing better to get you awake then brushing teeth.

Fifth - Get dressed. Again, not hard. In my case it will be in workout clothes as I will be adding a sixth.

Sixth - Go for a jog, walk or run with the dog. Get that blood flowing and the brain juices percolating. 

So far I'm one day in, and except for having the dog with me I followed the steps above quite closely. So far so good. The fact that I have also re-started my blog on the same day that I started this exercise of waking up early makes me think it will be a successful enterprise for my writing life as well as my everyday life. 

My first novel, Toe the Line was written in the pre-dawn hours. I woke up almost every morning at 5 AM to crank it out. I've noticed lately my time to write has become less and less easy to find. Sometimes I'll carve out evenings to write but when evening comes I find an excuse not to write. Hopefully going back to morning writing will be just what my writing life needs.  

"Think Dashiell Hammett meets Lee Child meets John Locke" for FREE

I have just made my latest book, Vapor Trail, free for the next week on Kindle (see here). I've gotten some great reviews. One of the best reads:

This is hard-boiled crime with a military twist. Think Dashiell Hammett meets Lee Child meets John Locke. The protagonist's almost clinical lack of empathy is shocking at first, then the speed at which characters are dispatched becomes a rhythm that draws the reader in, carries you through the plot twists, and dumps you out at the end of the book, determined never to join a military style workout group, ever. A great, quick read, especially if you are a fan of grindhouse movies.

If you have been looking for a free book with some decent reviews, may I suggest Vapor Trail (here). And may I also suggest you let me know what you think? I promise to return the favor.