Both Create A Character Clinic and Hunting the Corrigan’s Blood are now available in print versions at the OneMoreWord Bookstore on Lulu.com.
The second version of CCC landed on my doorstep Saturday afternoon, and it came out just right. I was overjoyed that it turned out so well…and incredibly relieved that it turned out at all. Getting this book into print has been a real challenge.
On a personal note, I haven’t felt like myself since late last year (something you may have noticed from the tenor of this weblog). While I wrote most of this off to a whole lot of years of overwork and (since about December) the depression that sometimes affects me, I discovered not too long ago that the horrible headaches and the constant exhaustion are primarily being caused by high blood pressure. I’ve reverted to a vegan diet, and the blood pressure has already started to come down. I still don’t feel like myself. But I am starting to feel better.
Oh. And the e-book store is down for maintenance. If you’re hoping to buy any of the cool books we have up on the site, please keep checking.
Hi, Katherine. Nice Behemoth. And I’m so pleased with the way CCC turned out, and delighted that your copy arrived and that you like it.
Lulu has done an excellent job of order fulfillment so far. I’m really impressed.
I got my copy of the CCC last night and I’m very pleased with it indeed, (thanks for this Holly); it looks great, plus I was really surprised it was delivered so quickly as well, it looks like once they got the conversion issues sorted Lulu are quite a slick outfit, oh and by the way I can’t wait until the other clinics are available; hopefully, you’ve now cracked all the Lulu bugs and the others will be easy to sort out; I’m working pretty solid for most of this week but I think I’ll take a bash at a character exercise this Thursday night and see how they pan out – wish me luck I’m going in!
PS – Did you like my bash at a behemoth sentence.
To concerns my veganism leans to cultishness 😀 — not so. I come from a family of hunters, and from childhood on, I always baited my own hooks, unhooked my own catches, knew how to clean ducks and fish, and was an avid participant in family feasts of pheasant and grouse and all sorts of ducks; trout and bass and pan-fried bluegill and fresh-from-the-river king salmon; venison and one moose (when we lived in Alaska. It was the best damned steak I ever tasted in my life).
I have no ethical qualms whatsoever about eating meat; I like it and probably always will. And from time to time, I may permit myself a steak just because. (Once the blood pressure is down to healthy levels, anyway.)
Milk is another matter. I never could stand the stuff in liquid form. There’s no animal on the planet that, as an adult, gets sustenance from sucking on the teats of an animal of another species except the human being, (and there is no difference between sucking on cow tits and having a milking machine do it for us) and I think the stuff is both gross and, as proven exhaustively in The China Study, poison.
Unfortunately for me, once liquid milk has been thoroughly rotted and solidified, I like it a lot. Cheese is a bitch to give up–especially blue cheese, which I learned to love, along with wild asparagus and morel mushrooms, from my father.
Don’t worry about the overseas p&p, I think with the dollar in its unhappy state against the pound that it only works out a little more than the standard £4.95 p&p you have to pay on most mail order stuff and off most of the shopping channels too. I know, my mum loves those damn jewellery shows. You can pretty much guarantee that if she’s left with the remote for 10 minutes you’ll come back to either QVC or some makeover extravaganza. It’s sad but we love her.
p.s. I’ve been itching for the lastest installment of the podcast. Hope I can hear from you soon.
Thanks,
Jeff
Hey Holly,
Hope things turn out health wise. I was straight-edge for a while, thats my generations term for super vegan. Couldn’t eat anything that cast a shadow! Just kidding. It was a “The Self is a Temple” sort of thing. No meat, artifical persevatives, no diary, no smoking, drinking, piercings or tattoos, any form of manufactured anything – including medicine. Just organically grown vegs. Turned out I am allergic to soy and really need the cultures that grow in diary to keep healthy (digestive thing). It was a little to cultish for me anyway, and lasted about 6 months. My point is, I did it because it was “in” (I was a teenager) and my friends were doing it. It caused a lot of health problems for me. Some people NEED to eat meat and diary in order to be healthy, I can’t process artifical irons (that includes RX) and have a low iron blood level – meaning no red meat, no clotting blood, and I could bleed to death from a paper cut.
I’ve run into people who say that is wrong to kill in order to live, but they never begruge a tree that is spreading its branches over smaller plants preventing them for getting sunlight, so that it may grow.
Thanks so much for trudging through the process to get CCC available in print form. My order’s in and I can’t wait to get it.
Holly,
Sorry to hear about the high blood pressure. I can only imagine what having a headache for a month is like…I thought three day long migraines were bad! Ordered the print copy of CCC–I already have it in e-book format but I think it will be easier to have a hard copy to look through. (less to clutter up the computer screen!) Am looking forward to the create a language work book.
Haven’t ever tried vegetarian or vegan diets, though if good ole eating right and exercising doesn’t start to work I may have to…but I suspect it would be hard to give up steak, chicken, fish…mmm. We’ll see though.
Katherine, thanks for buying it. I’m sorry postage overseas is so brutal. The rumor is that Lulu is expanding overseas printing, and that this will mean sooner or later, overseas buyers of Lulu books will be able to get them for local shipping costs. Sooner rather than later would be good.
I read The China Study several months ago. It was excellent, though it didn’t have anything in there that I hadn’t already known. I’d read Diet for a Small Planet and Fit for Life, and even though both of those were written by perceived nutcases, and The China Study is a massive and exhaustively researched scientific study, they actually say the same thing. I tried out what I read in Fit for Life back in late 1997 through the start of 2001, and my results convinced me the nutcases had it right, even if I never quite bought into some of their explanations.
I’ve done vegan before–lost about seventy post-partum pounds in three months back in early 1998, dropped my heart rate from 80 BPM down to 56 BPM, dropped my cholesterol from over 200 to 118mg/dl, and dropped my blood pressure from the then-normal 120/80 to my much-preferred 90/60. I know it’s good for me, and we have a ton of great recipes that we eat from.
I had two miscarriages in quick succession in 2001, though, and then there were a couple of really stressful, difficult years including and following that one, and, depressed, I came off of vegan eating and never managed to quite get back on and make it stick. It’s entirely too easy to eat things that will kill you.
I have a good enough incentive to do it this time. The challenge will be to keep doing it when my blood pressure is down to normal in the next couple of months, and all the time after that, when the weight comes off, the cholesterol is good, and I forget what it was like to have a pounding headache for a whole month.
Yikes veganism! I wish you luck with the diet, sounds terrible to my carnivorous nature. There is truth in the fact that the body craves certain foods which are beneficial so perhaps it wouldn’t be a struggle even for me.
I ordered the CCC for the bargain price of $30, which should be about £17 I think once the conversion charge is put on the credit card. I can’t wait for it to arrive, I’m sure it will be worth it.
Congrats on going vegan. Vegan diets help cure many health related problems. Check out the book “The China Study” if you want to know more. It is an incredible book.
It’s much easier these days, with the advent of TVP. If you can’t deal with soy, there’s soy-less Quorn vegetable protein, made from fungi (some types have egg whites, though).
I hope you feel better soon, Holly. 🙂
As an ex-vegan and current vegetarian of several years, I know how tough it can sometimes be to remain vegan — although not nearly as hard as people make it out to be. The temptation to go back to eating meat, especially, is rare. I ended up going back to vegetarianism because of a soy allergy that made eating vegan too much of a pain.
As it’s getting longer and more complex, I’m beginning to thing there will be enough of the Language Clinic to make into a workbook.
This fact does not, however, bode well for completing the whole of the Worldbuilding Clinic this year. Or the Language Clinic this week. We’ll see, though. I’m plugging on it right now.
You hear so much that high blood pressure doesn’t have symptoms, but that isn’t actually true. I, too, discovered my HBP via my symptoms. Glad you’re feeling better! ^_^
As for orders – I have CCC, so I’m waiting for the Language Clinic. Is that going to be only eBook – or will we be able to order it from Lulu, too?
~PJ~
No problem. I hope you’re feeling yourself soon.
Thanks, Jason. I really appreciate it.
Horray! My order is in for both!