When I checked out the application on the Mac App store the other day I saw loads of comments from people who have already used it publish their own books and that it was very easy.

But will I use it?

The answer is yes and no.

I will use ‘iBooks Authoring’ to post ALL THAT MATTERS so it will finally be available on the Apple iBooks store. I plan to do that as soon as I am done writing MIRROR IN TIME. While I have been writing my second book, I have been planing in the back of my head to hire a third party to code out the book for the Kindle, Nook, iBooks, and other e-book readers. Coding out the first book took up a lot of my time and I just assume put that in someone else’s hands who has more experience than me at doing it.

I love soda. I love how it tastes. I love how it makes me feel. As soon as I have finished one bottle, I am jonesing to open the next one.

Soda is my drug when I need a fix. It’s my cigaret when I need a break. It’s my coke when I need a hit. It is my one true addiction that I just can’t break. It is my vice.

I have read in the ’4 Hour Body’ book that diet soda can prevent weight loss. That anything more than a can of diet soda a day will mess with your goal to loose weight and it is true. I have been tracking my weight daily since I started the Slow Carb diet and it’s clear that my recent plateau is a direct result of the diet soda I drink daily.

I have already started to ween myself off this insane addiction and it already feels like an uphill battle in the cold of night. With all the ingredients in diet soda like Aspartame, Phophoric Acid, Potassium Benzoate, Phenylketonurics, and Phenylalanine there is no way this is healthy for anyone on the planet. These two dollar words on the side of my diet soda bottle are probably the reason why I am addicted to it like heroin in the first place.

To get off this addictive nectar I am taking a couple of approaches. The first one is just a slow ween off. Everyday I am going to slowly reduce how much diet soda I drink till I am off or at least get down to 1 can of diet soda a day as recommended by the ’4 Hour Body’ book. (The author of wich admits to be a huge addict of Diet Coke and states that reducing how much he drank was very difficult.) As I ween myself off of diet soda, I am going to supplement my caffeine needs with green tea. Green tea is great antioxidant and good for your metabolism.

As far as my weekly cheat day goes, I believe I am still going to drink a lot of soda. But on my cheat day I have always drank real sugar soda like Jones Sada, or Pepsi Throwback. The ingredients in these sodas are fewer and you can actually pronounce them unlike the ingredients in diet sodas.

I can understand a place like Seattle not keeping their roads clear of snow an ice. Weather conditions like the ones they have recently suffered, have been dubbed SnowPocalypse or SnowMageddon, are not a daily, monthly, or even yearly occurrence. They are just as random as achieving a critical hit in Dungeons & Dragons. So I can let places like Seattle slide on having bad to unsafe road conditions every few years. It’s hard for a city to justify having plow trucks for a meteorological even that happens randomly and lasts for such a short time.

A place like Juneau, Alaska on the other hand is much harder for me to forgive. The city and state know that each year it is going to snow. They know each year what the roads are going to be like. Yet, for some reason this year they do not seem to be taking the task seriously.

In years past I could rarely drive down any road in Juneau and not see a city plow truck scraping snow and ice off of the streets during the winter. This year it has been a rare occurrence that I have seen a city plow truck and when I do they are not scraping the streets as they plow the snow. This has resulted just about every road in Juneau is covered in ice. Everyday that I have driven to work or driven home in the last several weeks I have seen a car accident of one kind or another.

What is more astonishing to me is that it is currently January, almost February now, and the city has still done nothing to correct this behavior. Even after citizens have complained. Sadly, I think it is going to take a vehicle accident involving some kind of official for them to step up their responsibilities to normal levels.

My band, Fire On McGinnis has started working on a new music video. I have no idea how long it will take to be completed, but from the animatics I have seen it looks like it is going to turn out pretty cool. I thought I would share these behind-the-seances drumming photos with everyone.

I laughed when my friends showed me this video a few days ago. Event though it is a joke it is still scary to me how much of our personal information we post on sites like facebook and how openly available it is to anyone looking for it. It makes me glad that I quit facebook for personal use.

Since just before the start of the new year I have been studding to get my Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) certification. My goal is to be well versed in all the CISSP information and get certified within five months (hopefully sooner). I have been delving deep into giant study tomes on CISSP and taking several legal pads worth of notes in the process. I have learned a lot from reading this study information and I have also had a lot of ideas and principles I already knew reenforced. But in the end I still have to pass the test and I am just as nervous about that as anyone else in my shoes would be.

I have also been making time to keep working on my second book that I have recently titled ‘Mirror Through Time’. Several days a week after work I have been visiting the local library to get in a couple of hours of writing in. Because I am studying for my CISSP work has slowed down on my book, but not stopped. Not in the least. In fact, I have recently started the second draft of ‘Mirror Through Time’ and I am so excited to finish it and get some other eyes on it for feed back.

Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s there was a great band located in Oak Harbor, Washington that went by the name of Wearing Black. My own band at the time, Kira’s Modern Mourning, was occasionally lucky enough to play gigs with them in and around the Oak Harbor area.

Wearing Black originally consisted of two acoustic guitar players and an electric bass player. Their music was amazing and it was guaranteed that whatever venue they where playing at, they would fill it up.

‘Root For The Bad Guy’ was one of Wearing Black’s' popular songs. People at the time loved to hear it and would sing along with the band when they played it. The song is an anthem to all evil doers and bad guy in fictional genres.

The band eventually disbanded leaving only a few recorded songs on-line for their fans. About a year after the band broke up it’s lead singer and guitar player, Saul Nathaniel McCartney, recorded a solo version of ‘Root For The Bad Guy’. Well, I really liked the song a lot. So, over the last 8 months I worked on a type of music video for it and uploaded it to YouTube. I hope you all enjoy it.

• I Lost 30 Pounds!

2011 started off with a book, ‘The 4 Hour Body‘. This book had a huge impact on me. Because of this book I have lost thirty pounds and I have kept it off! This is amazing to me because my weight is something I have struggled with my whole life. Now, I don’t feel like I am struggling anymore. I feel like I have it all under control.

• I Got Married!

As far as importance goes, my marriage should be the first thing on my list. But I have decided to do my 2011 list in chronological order rather than importance.

In April, I got married to my beautiful wife Hannah, and I can’t think of another person I would rather spend the rest of my life with. After being together for seven years we had an amazing wedding with our family and friends. We can’t thank everyone enough for showing up and supporting us on our special day. But please know we are thankful and grateful for each and every single one of you.

• I Wrote My First Book

Lots of people have their own ideas and techniques on writing. I just like to write using the outline as my guide. The key word there being ‘guide’. While you are writing chapter 1 your thoughts and writing may go in a whole other direction. Some aspect of the story may grow out of your typing organically. That is perfectly fine and I encourage you to follow that flow. I find that a lot of my writing is till very organic and spawns lots of ideas. But by the end of it, I have touched on all of my outlined points. If something I have written was not a specified in my outlined point and it turns out to be really good I will add it to my outline should I ever need to reference the chapter I put it in.

Remember that your first draft should just be used to get your ideas out. To write the story. The first draft for me is more of a brain dump. Ernest Hemingway said “The first draft of anything is shit”, and that is how I treat it. Not until the second draft do I scrutinize over everything letter, word, and comma.

As far as words are concerned and how they should be used, I will not waste your time. The truth is that far greater writers than I have written wonderful books on how words should be used. I encourage you to seek out at least one of these books and read it before you start writing your first book. My personal favorit is ‘On Writing: 10th Anniversary Edition: A Memoir of the Craft’ by Steven King.

I get so excited just talking about it because I really think it is an amazing story that everyone is going to enjoy. Anytime I am asked what my second book is about, and I tell the person “time travel”, their face’s light up and tell me they can’t wait for it to be release so they can read it. Receiving this kind of enthusiasm only motivates me more to finish this book as soon as I can.

When the idea to tell a time travel story came to me, I started by drafting out a 21 chapter outline. This does not mean that the final book is going to be 21 chapters. It could go over, or it could be under. Thats just a result of the organic process of writing.

At the same time I started the outline for this book, I also started a character list to jot down names and descriptions of all the characters on to. Again, another organic process for me that is constantly evolving and reshaping its self in new and exciting ways.

When I started writing ‘All That Matters’ it was in the beginning of 2011. I had few distractions in my life and was very much focused on completing the book. As I am writing my second book in this later half of 2011 and on into 2012, I am faced with more distractions and obstacles then I had with my first book. Holidays have been one thing that have been a distraction for me. My day job is another. So to say I have been busy would be an understatement.

All this outside pressure from work and the holidays has resulted in a very loose first draft of my book. Looser than I would like to have. What this means is that I am going to have to take a little more care, time, and effort when I take on the second draft of this story. But once the second draft is done it will be sent off to my editor.

I am the kind of person who likes to post to Twitter and Google+ how many words I have written each day. I like the idea of telling the world how many words I have written because it keeps me motivated and accountable. Its a practice I have not been doing everyday because I don’t get to write as much as I want to everyday. I write everyday, but its mostly just a couple of hundred words. Not the thousand plus words I like to write.

By an extension this blog is also helping me remain motivated. By talking about what I am writing and what I want to write I feel like I am being held accountable to finish this book. Anything I can use to help my motivation is a good thing.