Man, He Works Fast
In one day, the cover art goes from black and white to this:
Daevan and Troius, in color
Am I pysched? Hell yeah.
Cover Art Coming Along Nicely
Christopher Stewart is doing an amazing job on my book’s updated cover, I have to say.
Coming along nicely, I'd say.
Draggin’ Ass
Still getting up at 4:30 am every morning to work out. Well, to be completely accurate, this week it’s been 4:40 am since Lady Aravan has been using the snooze button once every morning. She’s in charge of the alarm. At one time, it was my responsibility, but this last time that she said she wanted to get up in the mornings, I said, “Sure. But you have to deal with the alarm.”
I did that because Lady Aravan has two stages of waking up. The first is a half-conscious state, where she is aware that she is being awoken, but nothing else. Her vocabulary consists of, “Nooooo,” “I’m so comfy,” “but I’m warrrrrmm,” and little else. I found it very difficult to be in a groggy half-state of awareness myself and hear this without having to lay back down myself, because I too wanted to say no, be comfy, and remain warm. Her second state is the actual fully-aware state, in which she remembers nothing of her half-awake antics. Sometimes she would get mad at me for waking her up, but that was rare. Read the rest of this entry
Hi Again, Jillian!
When Lady Aravan and I started working out, we started with Jillian Michaels. She’d always been an inspiration to both of us, ever since we first saw the Biggest Loser, and we own all of her DVDs. We worked our way through the 30 Day Shred, then the Biggest Winner Series, and then Banish Fat & Boost Metabolism, No More Trouble Zones, and Yoga Meltdown (the only one of her DVDs that ever disappointed us, but maybe I’ll talk about that another time). We were alternating the last 3 as our workouts for a few weeks when we saw Bob Harper’s DVDs, which I’ve written about once or twice.
We loved Bob’s DVDs, and said that it was OK, we weren’t exactly “cheating” on Jillian since it was Bob, same show, you know. Then we did the workout plan, and loved it as well, and saw incredible gains across the board. Once we “completed” it, we wondered what to do. Keep going with Bob? Mix in other things? Go back to Jillian? Since Lady Aravan had tweaked her shoulder earlier and it was taking time to get better (especially since she never stopped pushing it, which is so like exactly what I do that I really couldn’t tell her not to, and it wouldn’t have mattered what I said anyway), we decided to do an all-cardio week. Yesterday we stuck with Bob. Today, we went back to Jillian after nearly three weeks.
New Cover Coming
In The Curse of Troius: A Zombie Fantasy Novel news, a new cover is in the works! I am very pleased to be working with Christopher Stewart (if “working with” means letting his talent do all the work) on the new and vastly more interesting and exciting cover. I can’t wait for it to be done, since the Black and Grey cover is a bit, uh, plain.
The Stranger and Troius battle as the horde looks on.
Bob Harper’s Inside Out Method Workout Plan – Final Thoughts
Two weeks ago, my wife and I decided to attempt Bob Harper’s workout plan using his new Inside Out Method DVDs, as laid out on his website www.mytrainerbob.com. (NOTE: the link to the schedule no longer appears to work, so, thanks to a friend, my lovely wife, and a scanner, I have a copy of the Inside Out Method schedule here.) It’s a 4-week program (although you can do week 4’s workout ad infinitum if you like) that starts with working out a few days a week and builds into a full 7-days-a-week exercise regimen. Lady Aravan and I started with Week 3, since we’d already been working out 6 days a week and didn’t want to cut back and start from the beginning, nor did we want to mix in other exercises (except strength workouts) among Bob’s different workouts. All Bob, all the time. So how did it go?
Bob Harper’s Workout Plan, Day 14
This is it, the last day of the 4-week plan. This is the first Monday in quite some time that I had to work out, so I was a bit apprehensive about the morning. The alarm starts up at 4:30, but since today’s workout is only 30 minutes, the Magical Snooze Button makes its first appearance in a month. Thirty extra minutes of interrupted sleep never felt so good.
But, in the blink of an eye, it’s 5, and time to get up. I am nervous, knowing that today is the strength portion of Bob’s Workout, the one where Zach looks as if he is going to die halfway through it. I know it’s a tough exercise program, and I’m not sure I’m ready. Bob, however, doesn’t much care if I am ready or not.
Bob Harper’s Workout Plan, Day 13
Two days left in what has been a difficult, challenging, but tremendously enjoyable workout program. Today is Yoga for the Warrior, while tomorrow holds the dreaded Strength portion of Bob’s Workout. But as Bob says in the yoga video, focus on the now and don’t worry about what’s coming up.
Before we do the yoga, we do some chores, moving boxes into the new shelves in the garage. It’s a nice day, in the 80s, so we have the windows open. We break a sweat doing the various chores, so when we get down to the basement for yoga, we’re already warm. Pretty much from the first minute on, Lady Aravan and I are both sweating so much that it’s going into our eyes, our mouth, sometimes even getting inhaled. When we go into down-dog, it runs back uphill, and having sweat running up your spine is a different sensation. It patters like little raindrops on the mat under my head. Maybe turning on the fan beforehand would have been a good idea.
Winter in Derenemyn 