Reflections on Turning 32

I'm turning 32 tomorrow and I've been having a lot of deep thoughts.  Such as:  my age added together now equals my mental age (five for the math challenged).

Yeah, kidding.  I could care less about growing older.  Getting old isn't the scary mess I thought it would be.  Getting old is a fun ride and I don't want to miss any of it.  Neither should you.  Also, I like pie.

Tune in tomorrow where I will be posting a VERY SPECIAL VLOG, announcing the winner of the Kitty Puke ARC contest.  Come on, name one other author who would make you enter to win a copy of a book that a cat threw up on.  I make no promises about his VLOG other than that I will definitely wear pants be awake.

Tune in tomorrow at noon!

 

Blog Chain: I'm a Boring White Guy

Welcome back to another awesome Blog Chain.  Before I get to the question, I just want to say that all the writers on this chain are awesome, so if you haven't already, you should definitely run through the chain and check them all out.  They're a brilliant group of people.

So anyway.  Sandra's up with a really intriguing question:

Have you ever created a character different from yourself in some significant way, such as (but not limited to) different gender, race, ethnic group, religion, or sexual orientation? If so, what, if any, research did you do to portray these differences? Was this character a main character, secondary character, or walk-on? Did these differences have an impact on the story?


Strangely enough, it wasn't until I wrote The Deathday Letter that I began writing these realistic teen male protagonists.  My protags have been girls obsessed with quantum physics, twins living in the dust bowl during the depression, an old German man, etc. And even still, I don't think any of my characters as like me.  Most of them are funnier than I could ever be.  They're more daring, more active.  I'm kind of lazy and lazy protags tend to bore readers.  


I tend to take a dim view though of authors writing across gender/race/sexuality/ethnic lines who rely on stereotypes.  I'm a white Anglo male, but that doesn't mean I should only write white Anglo male characters.  In fact, because we live in a varied world, I think we have a responsibility to accurately reflect that world.  When I wrote Ollie's best-friend Shane, I thought back to a young African-American man I worked with at the GAP when I was 16.  I can't remember his name, but he was so preppy and so shy and SO smart.  We got along great.  So I didn't do any research when I wrote Shane.  When I think of Shane, I think of him as this brainy, bad driver who loves pizza and happens to also be African-American.  


Stereotypes exist for a reason, but I think people who rely on them are lazy.  I think that if you're going to use a stereotype (like say a poor, overweight white person who lives in a trailer home) then you'd better have a darn good reason for using it.  And if have a good reason, then research would be helpful.  


Did I go off topic?  LOL.  So, my answer is that yes, I do write characters significantly different from myself.  As I should, because no one wants to read a bunch of books by a boring white guy about a bunch of boring white guys.


I highly suggest that you check out Michelle, who's quite a character herself, and who answered this before me, and then tomorrow you'll definitely want to read the amazing and awesome Abby's take.

My Pants Keep Falling Down

I'm down to 199!  I'm officially back under the 200 pounds mark.  When I exercise, I always forget how full of energy I become, and how I sleep less and want to watch less television.  Every part of my life becomes better when I'm eating healthy and exercising.  Sadly, I never remember why I fall off the wagon. But I'm well on my way.

I read part of one book and all of another this past weekend.  I'm counting Monday as the weekend since I took the day off and did nothing but relax.  One book was absolutely amazing and the other was terrible.  One book had beautiful writing, one had serviceable writing.  One kept me flipping the pages to see what happened next while the other kept my flipping the pages to see how much longer I had.

Funny enough, the amazing book was the one with the serviceable writing.  Now, when I say serviceable, I don't mean bad.  I simply mean that there was nothing that really stood out about the writing--AND THAT'S A GOOD THING.  Sometimes we writers get so in love with the lines we write that we forget that every line must serve the story.  There were definitely some pretty phrasings but nothing that made me stop and think about it.  What this book did have was verve.  The characters and setting yanked me in, while the pace kept me moving along.

The book with the beautiful writing was the one I couldn't finish.  Here's why, and here's a pitfall that I myself have fallen into:  first person does not give someone a license to say everything on the narrator's mind.  Personally, I love first person.  I love the present tense.  There's an immediacy and an intimacy that 3rd person sometimes lacks.  While that can often be a good thing in sweeping epics (Harry Potter anyone?) in smaller stories, I think FP is king.  But done badly, it can be immensely tedious.  In the book I was reading, the narrator was talking about how he came to be in the class with a particular person.  His explanation lasted through about twenty-five pages, and sadly, offered nothing to the story.  Every event had a backstory that took too many pages to tell.  Not only did all that yapping not show me anything about the character (except that he enjoyed talking) but it dragged the story to a halt.  I was only about a quarter of the way in and I felt like I was blindly stumbling through a garden maze and just wanted out.

So there are two things I took from this:  One, pretty writing doesn't necessarily mean good.  Two, first person narration does not give people a license to kill readers with boredom.


Coming up this week:  BLOG CHAIN!!!!  Also, Saturday I'll be drawing the winner for the kitty puke ARC contest.  And there might be other stuff too.  Probably.  Lost is a rerun this week so I might have extra time.

Music to Die By

I think I've mentioned before that I love music.  I'd marry it if I could.  I've often wondered what it would be like to have someone follow me around so that I could have my own personal theme music.

This is a playlist I created to go along wit The Deathday Letter.  It's a fun representation of how I see the book.

Have a listen.  It's Friday.  And feel free to laugh at my musical taste in the comments and tell me some of your favorite songs at the moment.  Happy Friday!

Your Book Sux

Weight update!  I'm down to 203lbs.  YAY!  I'm finally able to wear a shirt I bought six months ago but haven't been able to wear.  I've still got a long way to go, but the work is paying off :)  Also, that means I'm up to 12 books to donate!

I came to a horrifying realization over the weekend:  Not everyone is going to like my book.  You're shocked, I know.  I was shocked too.  I fully believe that foul-mouthed angels perched on my shoulder while I was writing the thing. So, I mean, not liking my book is like hating puppies or something.  But it's true.  Not everyone is going to be able to relate to my sex-obsessed teen boy character.  Some people will be turned off by the profanity.  Some people just hate to laugh. And you know what, it's okay.

But still, that's a tough realization for a writer to come to.  Ollie's hilarious march toward his own death has been a part of my life for quite some time now.  I've eaten, breathed, and lived The Deathday Letter for almost two years.  I love it more than I love my blind dog.  And when I realized that not everyone is going to dig Ollie's adventure, it made me sad.  And then upset.  And then I finally realized that we all have different tastes.  I began thinking about the books I didn't like and it made me feel better.

I detest Hemingway's books.  Hate is more appropriate.  I think he wrote overrated dreck that is more appropriate lining the bottom of a bird cage.  I think his terse style and spare characterizations were simply a cover for the fact that he sucked at writing.  I read every single one of his books and most of his short stories and never found anything worthwhile in them.  Hills Like White Elephants is maybe the most ridiculous story of all time.

I also didn't like Catcher in the Rye.  For the most part, I felt that Holden was an entitled, hypocritical brat who used his disaffection to avoid life in an unmeaningful way.

I didn't like Slaughterhouse Five.  I thought it was dull and uninspired.

I didn't like Naked Lunch.  To me, it was pretentious and self-indulgent.

Now, I'm not trying to start an argument with the people who love these books.  What I'm doing is proving that taste is highly subjective.  I dislike books that a large percentage of people who read them, love.  And that's okay.  It's okay because it means that it's okay for people to dislike my book.  And that's just something that writers have to get used to.

So tell me:  Are there any books that you didn't like that it seems everyone else was drooling over?  Leave me some comments!  But keep it classy.  Even if you really didn't dig a book, there's a writer out there who hearts it more than anything.

And don't forget:  Only ten days left to send in your story and enter to win a slightly damaged ARC.  Also, if you're shy, you can just leave your name. I understand.

ZOMFG! Agatha Christie

I totally had a "Holy Crap!" moment today when my agent tweeted something and I realized there were only 56 days until Deathday comes out.  It was only like a year and a half ago that I was having "holy crap!" moments about having an agent.  And then only like a year ago where I was peeing my pants every time I realized Simon Pulse was publishing my book.  Here's my shameless self-promotion for the week:

• If you haven't entered, you have ten days to enter to win a slightly "damaged" ARC of The Deathday Letter.
• You can read the first chapter on my site.
• And you can find out whether I'm down with Madonna or Lady GaGa over at Sarah's blog.

Okay, enough of that.  Does anyone NOT know who Agatha Christie is?  Okay, so I've always been aware of her.  I knew some titles of her books and that she is pretty much the best-selling author of all freaking time.  JK Rowling ain't got nothing on Agatha.  But I didn't know much else.  Until I started doing some research on a personality disorder called a dissociative fugue.  Basically it's when a person up and leaves their life.  They travel away and don't remember who they were.  Often, it's difficult to tell that there's anything even wrong with the person, though when pressed for their identity, they can become confused.  And in rarer cases, people in a fugue state will adopt new identities.

The reason I got onto Agatha Christie is because she famously disappeared for eleven days and it has been postulated that she suffered from a dissociative fugue.  Also, she got all dressed up to write.  My neighbors are lucky if I put on pants.  Anyway, all this reading about the extraordinary woman made me wonder how great a writer she was.  So I picked up AND THEN THERE WERE NONE.  First off, I'm not a big fan of mystery, but I read this at night and had trouble sleeping.  It's not so much that it's scary, but these 10 folk are stuck on an island and some psycho is killing them according to a children's poem!  NUTS!  Getting into the style of the time is a little difficult, but her characters are so fantastic and sharply drawn.  I was happily surprised by the ending and am now reading MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS.

It just goes to show you that some books never go out of style.  I don't know that I'll be reading many mysteries after Agatha Christie, but she's certainly put the genre in a new light for me.

Another book I want to tell you about is THIRTEEN DAYS TO MIDNIGHT.  I read it this weekend and was really surprised.  I expected a predictable thrill ride but ended up with a story about having the power of life and death and all the consequences that go along with that.  My only complaint is that it wasn't long enough.  The writing is solid, the characters well-drawn, and the pacing excellent, but what really makes this book are the consequences.  Read the book and you'll get what I mean.

What's up for the rest of the week?  Who knows.  I'm totally off script.  I might have my brother by though for a segment called: Awkward questions from my brother.   Have a fantastic week!

All About Hit Girl

I used to be ashamed to like things like sci-fi movies and comic books and fantasy novels.  But geek is chic in 2010, and I'm so glad.

Last night I went to the late opening of KICK-ASS.  Most people who've heard of it don't really know much about it.  It's part satire, part comedy, part drama, and all awesome.  It's the story of a world where a normal kid named Dave buys a wet suit, tries to be a superhero, and gets his ass kicked.  The world is populated by other heroes.  Big Daddy and Hit Girl being two.

I read some of the comics and fell in love.  Like Kill Bill, Kick-Ass doesn't take its own violence seriously. Hit Girl is an eleven-year-old girl who uses language so foul my mom would walk out.  Big Daddy spends her childhood teaching her how to take a bullet to the chest and giving her knives and guns for her birthday.  There's a brilliant scene in which Hit Girl takes out an entire room of bad guys that plays like a video game.  That scene sums up what the writer is trying to say about violence.  It's not real.  The blood, the death, it's nothing kids haven't seen in "serious" hero movies or in video games.

Aaron Johnson as Kick-Ass gives us a hero we can relate to.  His is a positive message that says:  if normal people stick their noses where they don't belong, they're likely to get killed, but sometimes you have to step up and be extraordinary.  Yeah, we're all laughing at his antics because as kids, most of us played at being a superhero at least once.  But Kick-Ass takes it a step further.

But the real stars are Chloe Moretz as Hit Girl and (and I shudder to say this) Nicholas Cage as Big Daddy.  I would go so far to say that this was Cage's best performance ever.  As a loving father who turns his girl into a crime-fighting sociopath, he was brilliant.  Chloe Moretz is going to be a star.  And it's really the relationship between Hit Girl and Big Daddy that becomes the core of the movie.

Now, there's a lot of controversy about the language and the violence--and I'm not saying that there isn't a TON of both--but it's meant to shock.  It's not gratuitous in the way a horror movie is.  It's there to make a point.  Sitting in the row in front of me last night was a guy who looked to be about 15.  He was there with his mother.  I wanted to high-five that woman.  Especially when I heard her laughing at all the right parts.

Did I actually review this movie?  I'm not sure, I'm at work and exhausted.  The movie rocked.  It fell short in the same way that most super-hero origin story movies do.  Too much background, not enough bad guy.  But if there's a number two, I'll be there on opening night again.

TEEN BOOKS DROPPED!

Today is Operation Teen Book Drop.  My fellow Crow, Shannon, wrote an awesome blog post explaining all about it here.  But basically, a whole mess of people got together to drop off teen books in various locations.

I chose to drop two.  One thats more guy oriented and one that might lean more girl.  However, both are suitable for either gender, but I like people to have choices. Anyway, I chose LIAR and ROCKET BOYS.  LIAR was one of my favorite books last year.  Best use of an unreliable narrator that I've seen in a long time.  And ROCKET BOYS is a true tale of Homer Hickham Jr.  He was a boy from a coal mining town who, along with his friends, learned how to build rockets.  It's a truly inspiring book.

I left both of these books at my local Starbucks.  It's near Jupiter High School and often where they congregate after classes let out.

Hopefully these books will find loving homes.  Tell me about your book drops!

Pacing

Anyone who's been reading the blog will know that THE KNIFE OF NEVER LETTING GO was just about my favorite book last year.  From the first chapter, Patrick Ness hooks you in and doesn't let go.  It's breathless.  Yet, he never once sacrifices character development to keep up his brutal pace.  All his characters are so well developed that, despite moving at breakneck speeds, when stuff happens to them, it resonates on the deepest emotional levels.  It's brilliant.

Not to say that all books have to move so quickly.  Every book needs to find the pace that works best for it.  For example, GOING BOVINE had a leisurely pace.  Sure, we knew Cam was dying and his magic bracelet kept reminding him of that, but Libba Bray took her time developing the story.  There were pit stops for self-reflection.  And that easy pace worked really well for it.  This was a journey to the end of Cam's life, and Bray was going to take it as slowly as she needed.  Never once did it drag, though.  She did the reverse of Ness:  she didn't sacrifice pacing for character development.

Those books are two amazing examples of how pacing and character development go hand in hand.  I know a lot of writing books say to start in the middle of the action, and that's okay, but it has to be grounded in character.  Conversely, if you start with nothing BUT character, people will get bored quickly.

For examples of both done the WRONG way, I'm turning to television.

Two new shows that I was extremely excited about are failing in different ways:

FLASH FORWARD is a show about a blackout that allowed everyone in the world to see approximately three minutes of their future.  The show has been moving toward that future at a snails pace.  It's spent so much time trying to make us care about the characters that the pace is painful and it's become so divorced from its own premise that I stopped caring about the characters.  Now, don't get me wrong, there are a lot of great character types.  There's a man who knows that his future is to die, one who knows he's going to lose his family and start drinking again, one who finds the daughter he thought dead, two who find each other and fall in love.  These characters have the makings of amazing stories.  But they sacrificed their pacing in order to force these characters down my throat.

V is the other show.  Its sins are completely opposite.  It's moving so quickly that the characters have turned from law abiding citizens (a priest, an FBI agent, and an alien--sounds like a bad joke) into terrorists and then freedom fighters, before I can come to care about any of them.  At this point, the characters are only faces.  They could all die and there would be no emotional resonance.  This show has completely tossed aside character to make way for plot.  Maybe the hope is that if they move fast enough, no one will notice that all the characters are flat.  They're cutouts.  And, again, that's sad, because the premise of aliens pretending to be friendly but secretly infiltrating our society, is a good one.

My agent is fond of telling me to make certain that every scene has a purpose.  Plot and pacing and character are all intertwined.  The characters in V are doing things ONLY to drive the story along.  Their actions do nothing to show us who they are as characters.  The characters in FLASHFORWARD do things that have nothing to do with the plot.  Their actions only show us who they are, but they do nothing to further the story.  The best stories marry the two. Each scene drives the story. Every characters' action shows who they are.

Moving on!  Tomorrow night I'm going to see KICK-ASS, so I'll probably talk about that.  Until then, what are some books or movies or shows that you think marry pacing and plot and character really well?

Operation Fat-butt

Happy Monday!

This week is a fun one.  I'm happy that GLEE is coming back.  I've also already bought my tickets to see Kick-Ass on Thursday night.

So my weight loss is going well.  As of yesterday I was down to 206.  That's 9 pounds and 9 books.  Not too shabby so far!

What have I been doing differently?  The first thing is that I've shut off the TV.  Not completely, but I'm weening myself off of it.  I mean, do I really care what happens on Grey's Anatomy anymore?  Not in the slightest.  So I've cut out shows that I'm not completely interested in.

I've also been really enjoying fruit.  Apples and oranges and pears and grapes.  YUM!  There are so many god fruits right now that I have trouble choosing.  I've never been a huge orange fan (I hate seeds) until my friend Rach gave me one while I was at her house.  Now I'm a convert.  Love them.  I'm actually going to go eat one right now.

My exercise has also been going well.  Saturday, for the first time, I managed to jog my entire 3.5 miles without stopping to walk.  Sure, my time sucked monkey butt, but when I started, I could barely finish a mile without stopping to die.

And that's it.  No crash diet, no pills.  Just loads of healthy food and exercise.

But there's one thing I could use some help with:  On the days when my knees hurt too badly to run, I use my elliptical.  I love reading my Kindle on it.  So tell me what some of your favorite books are right now so that I can find something good to read.  I've been reading a lot of realistic YA and I'm looking for something with more adventure.

Also, do you have any weight loss goals?  What are they?

Tune back Wednesday.  I'm going to talk about pacing in storytelling involving two books and two television shows I recently gave up on.

And don't forget you can read CH 1 of The Deathday Letter and then enter to win an ARC.

Chapter 1 of THE DEATHDAY LETTER

Okay, so I promise that soon I'll get back to regular posting (like the fact that I'm down to 207 pounds!).  But Simon Pulse has been awesome enough to let me post the first chapter of THE DEATHDAY LETTER for everyone to see.  Follow the link below and read it in all it's glory.   And while you're there, you'll have the opportunity to read the second chapter too.  I hope you enjoy.

DEATHDAY LETTER CHAPTER 1

Give a boy a book update

Happy Wednesday!

I overestimated by ability to multitask which is why I haven't spoken about this in a couple of months.  But I wanted to do an update on my plans for my plan to get more boys to read.

The first thing is that people kept referring to it as Give a Boy a Book, which is infinitely easier to remember and say, so that's what I'll be calling it for the time being.

I've spent a lot of time working on ways to distinguish what I want to do from the other sites that are working with this issue.  Guys Lit Wire does a fantastic job reviewing books they think boys would like (by the way, they're teamed up with a couple of other organization to collect and deliver books for Navajo and Apache teens, so drop by), and Guys Read is a great site for encouraging boys to read and men to step up and help them.

So the plan I've come up with for Give a Boy a Book is to start with a website that functions as a way for boys/teens/adults to find and rate books.  There will be a rating system based on different criteria.  Instead of a simple 1-5 star system, visitors will have the ability to rate books based on criteria like humor, action, romantic relationships, magic, science.  Then, when searching for a book, visitors will be able to input their preferences based on the criteria.  Say I was looking for a funny book that was high on action but low on romance, I could input that and find books that matched up.

To that end, I've secured the domain names giveaboyabook.org and giveaboyabook.com  Within the next couple of months I'll be rolling those out and keeping them separate from my author self so as to avoid any potential conflicts of interest.

The second part of the Give a Boy a Book plan is more grassroots.  While I think that creating websites to promote books and review books and help people choose the right books for boys is great and necessary, I think the best way to get more boys to read is to put books directly into their hands.  To that end I'll be working out a Book Crossing like program where people can download stickers and then take books that they think a boy would like and give it to one.  Sounds easy, right?  People who read the book will be encouraged to log-in to the website and rate the book and then pass it along to another boy they think might like it.

I read a lot when I was young but some of my favorite books were those loaned to me by others.  They were books I only gave a chance because someone put it in my hands and told me I'd like it.

The web is a great place to start, but if it doesn't translate into something in the real world, then it's not going to work.

There's the update.  That's the plan.  Next time I update it will be with a website...hopefully.  And, as always, I invite ideas, criticism, suggestions.

Thanks!

Deathday Letter ARC Giveaway!

So here's the story:  ARC's for The Deathday Letter were in short supply.  I had two to give away for contests and the like.  A friend of mine left her boyfriend and was between houses, so I told her she could stay in my spare room for a few weeks.  She brought along her three cats.  You see where this is going, don't you?

Okay, well you cat people probably know where this is going.  You dog people may be going, "So what?"  Well my first mistake was leaving the ARC out on my kitchen table.  Now, I did a good job of cleaning up and making sure that anything that could potentially fall down or be knocked over, was moved.  Except for my poor, poor ARC.  One day, not long after the cats claimed my home as their own, I came home from work to find a large pile of cat vomit hanging off the front of my book.  So I said to the cat, "Tell me what you really think of the book."

My roommate cleaned it off and it now only looks slightly water damaged.  But I was left with the dilemma: What do I do with it now?  Would anyone actually want a copy of The Deathday Letter that had been kitty-puked on?  Well we're about to find out.

Now begins the official Deathday Letter ARC Giveaway!  Entering is easy.  Leave a comment telling me about something special that YOUR pet destroyed, and post a picture to go along with it.  Cat, dog, goldfish, doesn't matter.  Don't have a pet?  No problem! Tell me something your roommate destroyed.  Most roommates are dirtier than pets anyway.  No roomates OR pets?  Make something up.  I'm a fiction writer, I'll appreciate the effort :)  If you have trouble putting a picture in the comments, link to one.  If you can't do that, then tell me all about your adorable Poopsie.  ***EDITED TO ADD*** If you're shy and don't want to leave a story, you're more than welcome to just leave a comment with your name.  It's not as much fun, but I totally understand :)

I'll draw the winner via random drawing on May 1st (my birthday!).  That's all there is to it.  So spread the word!  There will also be awards for the cutest pet (to be decided by vote) and the funniest story (to be decided by whether I shoot coffee out of my nose).  The only stipulation is to keep it clean-ish.

Spread the word, the contest begins NOW!

By the way, that's not the cat in question, it's my dog, Maxx, looking particularly regal.  Also, the ARC is pretty clean, so no worries about lingering vomit.

This is the cat that did the vomiting and a picture of the ARC:

Blog Chain: Chasing the Trends

Hey!  We're back on the blog chain and we've got some new members, so show them some love.

This chain is brought to us by the trendsetting Michelle who wants to know:

Do you write for the market or for yourself? Why? Are there times you do both? Or times when you've written something specifically because it was "hot" at the moment? If so, how did it turn out?

I think the answer to that is that I write for myself.  Deathday was definitely for myself.  That I know of, horny boys with one day to live, isn't nor has it ever been a trend (though I'm certainly hoping it becomes one!)

After Deathday sold, I spent a lot of time trying to come up with the next idea.  I definitely looked into writing something with a paranormal bent.  I thought about writing something that maybe followed a trend, but every time I did, it felt wrong.  I'm just not the paranormal kind of guy.  I think if I ever wrote a vampire book it'd be silly.  I also came up with some ideas that my agent felt weren't marketable, but there's a huge difference between trendy and marketable.  Deathday wasn't trendy, but it had a hook.

The problem with trends is that if you try to follow one, by the time you write the book, revise it, sell it, revise it more, two to three years could have gone by and that hot trend could be cold.

I think the best advice I got was to write something you love, write something great, and don't worry about the trends.  Who knows, maybe you'll be the one to start the next big thing.

So tomorrow head on over to the ever-awesome Christine's blog to see how she handles trends.

My Big Fat Butt

I'm just going to put it right out there:  I'm fat.  Fatter than I've ever been in my life.  Growing up, I was always painfully skinny.  I don't think I topped 120lbs until I was 20.  People often thought I was bulimic because I could pack food away and never gain weight.  Shoot, if I just glanced at a gym the wrong way, I dropped ten pounds.

But the last few years has seen me really battle with my weight.  The last two years have been the worst.  While I was writing The Deathday Letter, I packed on a lot of pounds and got up to about 195.  I dropped about 15 lbs to go to Europe but immediately upon my return, I started my slow build to where I am now, which is my heaviest weight of 215.

It's easy to say that, because I spend so many of my hours sitting in front of a computer, I should just resign myself to being overweight.  I mean, that's what I've been doing.  But that's wrong.  I look like crap, feel like crap, and my health is probably terrible.

I tried to give myself a goal by signing up for a marathon last year.  I got a training schedule and tried to stick to it for a couple of days.  It didn't go well.  In fact, I think my lack of progress made me even lazier.

Over the last two weeks I've changed my diet and my exercise schedule.  I'm eating healthier and jogging 3.5 miles daily.  But I need a better goal.  So here's what I'm going to do:

For every pound I lose, I'm going to donate one book to a charitable organization (if you know a good one, let me know! I'd prefer it to be one that works with children and literacy)  My deadline will be June 1st.  If I get down to my goal weight of 175 by June 1, I'll donate 50 books.

This way I can count on you all to harass me and make sure I lose the weight and donate all 50 books.  If anyone wants to join in, email me and I'll set up a special page to track progress.  Over the next couple of months put together some posts about how I'm working to lose the weight, and how being heavy these last couple of years have affected me.  And I encourage you all to tell me about ways that you stay healthy and fit.  My goal isn't to "diet."  It's to effect a healthy change in my lifestyle that helps me get to a healthy weight.

So let's do this.