Book Launch

My friend, Tristi Pinkston, is having her book launch for Hang 'Em High.

When: Saturday, August 13th, 12 – 4 pm
Where: Pioneer Book, 858 S. State, Orem
Prizes, games, Dutch oven cobbler (first come, first served)
Authors Tristi Pinkston, Nichole Giles, Heather Justesen,
Cindy Hogan, and J. Lloyd Morgan

She is also having a blog contest.

I wish I could be there, but I've got too much to do down here in beautiful St. George.

Weight-Loss Wednesday Week III - And Balancing Life

I have two tidbits of self-help for everybody. Both could be applicable to writing, but these were written by request of others and I thought I'd post them here.

So, first, is an excerpt of the Email I sent out for today's Weight Loss Wednesday:

If you aren’t meeting your weight loss/maintenance goals then you might need to sleep on it. Substantial medical evidence points to a correlation between good, interrupted sleep and weight. Good sleep allows for energy to get you through your day (and your workout) and also regulates hormones. With a lack of sleep, your body cuts back on producing leptin (the hormone that tells you when you are full) and produces more ghreliln (the hormone that increases your appetite) enticing you to eat more – and usually unhealthy – food.

So shoot for getting at least 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep per night and you could literally be losing weight in your sleep.



Also, I was asked to write for the Authors Incognito August newsletter a segment on balancing life. That, and other contributions, can be read here:

Authors Incognito August Newsletter

Time to Catch Up

It's been two and a half weeks without a blog update. I'm sorry I'm a blog slacker, though I do feel like a lot of things in my life have progressed. For instance, since my last blog post I've ran two half marathons and kept them under the time I wanted.

As for the Wednesday Weight-Losses, I sent out a few Emails but they were so short I didn't think they would justify a blog post. For those who are interested in weight loss, I think you will find a portion of my last note of interest:

For those who don’t know, I’m a data junkie! I love looking at and analyzing numbers. Here is what I found interesting about the results. Those who DID NOT keep track in their habit trackers lost an average of .77 pounds. Those who DID keep track lost an average of 1.87 pounds. That is a 243% improvement over those who didn’t!! So if you didn’t lose what you wanted and you didn’t keep track of your daily food, water, and exercise then by all means start tracking NOW. The ONLY difference is that one group tracked and the other didn’t.

For my WIP, I'm pretty deep into the world building. It is hard, yet rewarding, work. I am surprised at how much work is actually involved in this process. I thought the first step would be putting together the outline and while that is coming to fruition, it is the world building I'm finding to be the time-consuming process I didn't see coming.

To practice writing, I entered Karen Hoover's Weekly Flash Fiction challenge. It is fun and I would encourage more people to get into it. Best of all, it only takes an hour of your time (it's in the rules). She just changed up the schedule and, unfortunately, it doesn't fit in with mine this week so I couldn't find time for another entry. I do look forward to entering more as my schedule opens up. For those who are into poetry, she also has a weekly poetry contest of the same vein.

And the result? I won! Well, I co-won. I tied with Rebecca Blevins so we have both won the following trophy for our blog:

I am planning a blog series soon to look at different ways to outline a story. I just read a book on story structure and I've seen, and mentioned previously, a few others. I would really like to explain, analyze, and discuss each method and hopefully get feedback from all of you good folks.

I noticed my "currently reading" page is out of date. I'll get that back to speed ASAP.

Thank you everybody for sticking around. I appreciate all of my followers!