But it’s also a major time sink. And given that time sink, it’s also a major worry. that worry being this: if I’m not participating, I’m not succeeding.

As you can tell, I’ve been away from the keyboard often recently. The day job has been monstrously huge for the past six weeks or more, and there have been vacations and events and travel both within the US and international. I barely have enough time to write a little, better yet read, and better yet keep up with the blog and my fledgling attempts to absorb what Twitter can do for me. And that’s the order of priority–family & work, then writing, then fitness, then reading, then socializing, then anything else.

I admit that I’ve gotten a bit worn down the past couple weeks, and allowed the “anything else” to step in front of socializing–just because it’s easier to sit like a lump on the couch than to actually think.

Regardless of any particular order of priority, I wanted to take a moment to say that one of the things I don’t like about this new and wonderful world is the aspect of competition that seems to be inherent in this social element of the game now. By that, I mean that by stepping out of the blog for a week or two, I find myself feeling that I’m losing ground to everyone else–that going silent is akin to not swimming in the tides required for success as a writer in today’s new world. The intellectual side of my brain says that writing a good story is still the main element of success in this field–that if you write as well as you can write, the rest will take care of itself. But that’s not what the emotional side of my brain says (and I’m apparently one of those weird people who is not dominated by one side of my brain or the other, instead they just bicker back and forth until settling on some compromise).

The intellectual side of my mind says this world of writing fiction is not a competition, but my emotional brain looks at the intellect and semi-calmly calls bullshit.

This is my current little paranoia as I settle back down into something that almost resembles a normal cycle of life and working. I’m sure I’ll recover just fine, and be back to it around here in no time flat.

In the meantime, I suppose I should not that I’ve been progressing moderately well with my efforts on the latest novel. I have one issue that needs to get resolved before I can say I actually know the full story, but these things have their ways of working out.

So fear not, those few of you out there still wandering around here, my silence does not mean that progress has stopped. Only that time is in short supply.

And, yes, managed to do some writing, too. But not a ton.

Returned home Saturday, and have basically slept from that point forward (I don’t sleep well on airplanes, so I had been awake for about 48 hours when I got home).

After three weeks of travel and hosting the parents and whatnot, it looks like life will get back to normal starting tomorrow.

Definitely nice, I think.

But, it’s all true. I swear it is.

Here’s a picture I took of Chicago to prove it.

While there we also saw several interesting things like the Cirque Shanghai acrobats, and the art institute. So, there’s my get out of jail free card. What’s that, you say? I could have updated in the hotel room? Well, yeah, technically that’s right. But by the time we got back there each night we were pretty well done-in. Chicago for us, you see, is all about the walking (I estimate we did 13+ miles the last day).

Other good things about the trip:

- Lunch with Brigid & Nick (twice!)
- Seeing parts of Transformers 3 being filmed
- A boat tour (first time after all these years)
- Berry Chill

So, anyway. I didn’t mean to talk about that today. Instead, I was going to talk about the publishing industry. I’ve been thinking a lot about things the past few weeks–past few months actually. And since I’m in this weird space where I was coming up through the ranks five or so years back, then took a detour, and am now back again, I’m in a personal position to make some commentary about what’s changed and how it affects us newbies (yeah, I know I don’t qualify as a newbie in some circles, but I figure that I’m a newbie until I’ve been publishing novels for five years. So there you go).

After working in this new world for a few months now, I’ve got a few thoughts about the publishing industry, and so for the next few posts I’ll be stringing along a running, stream-of-consciousness ramble about things I think are relevant to newish writers as well as to readers as a whole.

Consider this your warning. [grin]

Run time up to later this morning. Here is a rough copy of an IM conversation we held.

Ron: BTW, I found my jump drive. It was in my shoe.
Lisa: Of course.
Ron: I thought you would like that.
Lisa: My only question is whether you found it before you put your shoes on or after.
Ron: I always check my shoe for jump drives before putting them on.
Lisa: Uh huh.
Ron: You never know when those buggers will crawl in there.

I admit, however, that I struggle to see why we let ESPN and stories about Lebron James through, but block Scientific America. I’m sure it’s something in the group we’ve (likely) outsourced to.

But these are the kinds of things that just make you wonder.

But today I’m stretching a little. So, bear with me.

Lisa sent me this story, which is somewhat relevant to us because, as I’ve noted a few times before, Lisa and I have been spending considerable time at the health club.

Quite honestly, I struggle with the story–particularly the headline.

For those who don’t click through, the headline asks: “Why doesn’t exercise lead to weight loss,” then the story goes on to explain that a collection of obese people were put through an exercise program without changing their diet and that they lost only seven pounds on average, with several losing only half that. So the first problem with this headline is, clearly, exercise actually did lead to losing weight.

I figure that the author did not write the headline. I assume that was a copy editor. But, even then I have to struggle with the lead portion of the article, which seems to be asking “why doesn’t exercise lead to MORE weight loss than this?” To that, I have to reply: Seriously? I mean, does one seriously have to ask why taking a collection of obese people and telling them to keep eating the same way that’s gotten them into their situation will severely limit the influence of exercise?

Just in case this is true, that one actually does have to answer that question, here’s the deal: assuming you are in fair health, either one of two things will happen when you exercise. (1) you will lose weight because the calories you burn off will offset those you eat, or (2) you will gain weight more slowly than you would have if you didn’t exercise. That’s the equation. It’s really very simple. Oh, sure, you can dig a little deeper to get some additional information and refine your weight control strategy (which this story touches on at its end), but the equation is all you really need to know about weight loss and weight gain. Exercise burns calories, and eating reasonable portions of a balanced diet allows exercise to do its thing.

Luckily, the article redeems itself a bit by quoting one of the lead researchers:

“The message of our work is really simple,” although not agreeable to hear, Melanson said. “It all comes down to energy balance,” or, as you might have guessed, calories in and calories out.

For the record, my BMI when we started going to the health club so often was 26.5, which put me in the “Overweight” category. Today it’s 23.4, which puts me clearly in the “normal” category. Lisa’s numbers are probably a shade better–and, yes, we’ve changed our approach to eating as well as exercising. Don’t get me wrong. We’ve not done any crash dieting. Such approaches would not work well for either of us, I think. I eat about as much as I ever did, for example, and I eat when I’m hungry. But we pay attention to what we eat, and we’ve gone to snacks that are more fruits and nuts than chips and cookies. Lisa takes her lunch to work, and I do the same a bit more than half the time (this saves money, too, of course).

So I’m sitting here wondering what it is that has me so perturbed about this article and its clearly misleading headline. To be honest, I’m not 100% certain. But it seems clear to me that we really don’t need this kind of confusing article being posted in one of the leading.

The big news is that Picasso’s Cat and Other Stories is now available from The Merry Blacksmith Press. And if you order from the publisher’s website in the next 24 hours or so shipping will be free! If you ordered prior to this, your shipping will be refunded.

Very excited here.

Focus, Ron. Focus.

I did manage a few words on another project–and they’ll all add us eventually, right?

The fact is, though, that when you’ve been into something deeply the brain does sometimes take a little while to fully change gears. In that light, here’s a fluffy piece of science reporting that suggests that all us writer-types may be in for a rude awakening more rapidly than some of us would like to think.

Personally, I’m not worried about the ebook idea itself. I think people will always want stories–and, in fact, I think the idea of shorter novels is fantastic. I loved the old short 50-60K books that you could sit down and read in a day and still have a little time left over. I think there’s some likelihood that stories delivered on bits and bytes may eventually reduce the need to see a big-ol’ book spine on the shelf, hence liberating the short novel once again.

Hey, it’s as good of a dream as any.

What I don’t like about ebooks and ebook readers today has everything to do with the need to play with formats. It’s not hard to click a few buttons and get your material into the format of your choice, but it’s annoying and the format conversions are not always so glorious.

Reading something should never be annoying.

It’s okay. Really, it is.

Anyway, I was up earlier this morning speaking to folks from China, which is pretty cool from about a hundred angles when you think about it a little. When I first started working, the idea that I would ever have collaborated productively with people in China would have completely boggled the mind. Now the idea of NOT doing so is passé.

The rest of this morning was about listening to the B-52s while finishing up bits and pieces that I’ve left to fall into the cracks as I was pressing to finish the last novel rewrite (which is now officially done for good–I think [grin]). This means I’ve put a submission together, and put my desktop back into something that resembles order. I updated some of my status files regarding submissions and whatnot.

It doesn’t sound like a lot, but I’ve been busy all morning.