IF YOU WANT SOMETHING DONE, ASK A RUNNER PERSON

Love this quote, and experience tells me it is true. When you are busy you are most productive. Right on the verge of combusting, but moving fast enough that all your engines are firing.  You use your time more efficiently and are always planning ahead, doing the 7 habits of highly effective people most effectively.

Over the last 2 months when I wasn't running, I had hours of time slots per week that were usually taken up by running, but I didn’t accomplish much more with the time. Time sped up while I slowed down. I just started running this week, and I can already feel the difference. My neurons fire a bit faster. The synapses snap to a bigger beat. I have a touch more bravado and a sprinkle more courage and confidence. It just gets your blood flowing, gives more focus, detoxes the evil out so you can attack things with more precision. Multi-tasking becomes natural.

Just ten miles last week did this. I’m working as author/publisher getting ready to release MILK-BLOOD, working with the editor, formatting copies, writing out guest blog posts. (Plus there's my nightly meeting with the devil, 12 pm midnight sharp.)  It's also the end of the school year which means classroom parties, band concerts, ceremonies. Plus the mandatory Game of Thrones viewing, catching up on Silicon Valley, watching the Stanley Cup, and reading for an hour a day. If I hadn't taken three runs this week, I'd accomlish much less. 

 Running actually doesn’t take from your time, it gives you more time by slowing things down while speeding you up. That's why during marathon training, your whole world seems so intense. The intensity of training bleeds into everything you do. 

If you want something done, ask a runner person.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO "ON THE LIPS OF CHILDREN"

ON THE LIPS OF CHILDREN is One Years Old today!

Happy Birthday to you, Cha Cha Cha

*Smashes its face into cake*

On June 6th, 2013, the book was published, and what a cool year it has been. The novel has received 68 reviews, 34 of them five stars, 30 of them four stars, and 1 glorious one star review that I have tattooed on my arse, word for word. The book's received some great praise from book reviewers, horror websites, run bloggers, and has been as high as the number three suspense/horror novel on amazon.

What perhaps is most important is that this is just so God-Damned FUN!!! To write and not be read saddens me, so I am ecstatic that the book is being read and the words are now scattered like ashes across the brains of humans everywhere.

When I first wrote this book, I was on the fence wether to self-publish or not, and am very grateful that Richard Thomas alerted me to the open submissions over at Books of the Dead Press, and that they agreed to publish the book. They've taught me so much, I've meet some great people and authors, and I'm kind of digging it. The excitement has certainly boiled over, and my next book will be on amazon next month.

I am so grateful for the support I've received from some awesome Run Bloggers, Book Bloggers, and for the book-signing opportunity from Running Fit, the premier shoe store in Michigan (the book is on their shelves!) and from so many awesome people at goodreads.

Here's a list of THANK YOU's with links, and I'm grateful for all of you. (Sorry for anyone I may have missed.)
  
The Horror News Network
Liz Loves Books
Shana Festa at The Bookie-Monster
Jeff at Detroit Runner
Ty at TyRunman
Author David Ecles
An Eclective Bookshelf
A Readers Review Blog
The Horror Honeys
Author and Editor Weston Kincade
Author Jan Kozlowski
Author Michael Garza
Author Michele Miller
Author Julie Hutchings
Salty Running (Halloween Contest)
Author John F.D. Taff
Author Chris Irvin
Author Bracken MacLeod
Cassie's House of Horrors
Senor Zombie
Author Trista Borgwardt
Running Fit
The Horror Bookshelf
Promote Horror
Reviewer David Spell 
Ravenous Reads
Char's Horror Corner
Miss Zippy
Author Sacha Scoblic
Dawna from The Kindle Book Review
Jill Will Run
Nikki at Horror After Dark 

I really appreciate your support. You're good people, and you won the chocolate factory, and if interested, also a copy of my next book:

MILK-BLOOD

Coming in July

NATIONAL RUNNING DAY. HAVE YOU CHECKED YOUR SCAR TISSUE LATELY?

"I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains, I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain. There's more than one answer to these questions pointing me in crooked line." ~The Indigo Girls  

"Scar tissue that I wish you saw." ~The Red Hot Chili Peppers

National Running Day! To me, this is like St. Patrick's day is for alcoholics, just another day to do our thing but reflect more on doing it. Fortunately, I have just started running after a 45 day lay off due to injury.

I went on my second run of the week. First one was a 3 miler, and today it was 4.

I was going to write a long story about my injury, but I will try to sum it up quickly.  Doctors are just people dressed up as doctors. Sometimes they say you have a tear in your quad, but it's an old tear that has healed over from the many weeks in a row you've already taken off running over the past year and a half.  That white mass they see on the MRI is scar tissue. Or it could be a smudge of spilled chobani yogurt. Either way, it is not a muscle that is still torn, even if their doctorate degree tells you so.

The tear in my quad was there indeed, but now it’s a muscle-hampering burning golf-ball sized piece of scar tissue. I learned that after many adventures to find a cure. I visited dark alleys, a couple of fortune tellers, a sage on a mountain top with poor wireless connections, but the best help I've found is at Tri-Covery massage right in my back yard.

For the last 3 weeks, I've been getting the scar tissue massaged out of me. When I say massage, you may think it is comforting, but it is painful. An elbow digs and grinds into the spot and it slowly dissipates. I laugh to make it hurt less, and do my best to not tighten and fight it. I can feel it in there, like a little baby alien ready to burst out of me, only it is fading, and will soon be gone. 

I would never have discovered this problem had I not asked for help from other runners. Advice from runners can be a tricky thing. The only thing more annoying than "always gives advice Runner Guy" is "always one-ups you Runner Guy". But I’ve been hitting up others openly, including blogger TyRunman and  Cait Chock and getting much needed thoughts.

My best thinking got me here, so I needed help. 

Cait Chock, the only creator of a comic book designed for runners on the earth,  was one of the first who mentioned the scar tissue thing. This was something the doctors and specialists didn't even bother with, for they were too busy trying to fix my knee. ("It's not the knee, it's the muscle tissue," I said to more than one doctor, but the myth of poor runner's knee persists).

Of course, this all could be a false positive, but every time I walk into Tri-Covery massage the burning mass of molten evil ju-ju is getting smaller and smaller, and it has helped more than the mutliple doctors I have seen. Had I followed the Orthopedic specialist from the renowned Core Institute, I would just be resting and nothing would change.

If you are within a stones throw of Novi, Run, don't walk over to Tri-Covery Massage. Kelsey has been the one working on me and I've made promises to pay her multiple thousands if she gets me running again (shhhh, I can't afford that, but don't let her know) but all their staff are wicked smart and good.

Thanks to them, to Cait, I'm hoping I can complain about regular niggles and not this one ever again.