This is a post on diet and weight loss — not something I usually blog about — but under the circumstances these subjects have been much on my mind.

I now weigh 113 pounds. Why is this significant? Because before I fractured my jaw on March 6, I weighed about 126 pounds. To give you some perspective, I’m 53 years old, 5’4” tall, and fairly athletic–on the day before my accident I ran 3.5 miles on the treadmill in under thirty-two minutes, followed by a weight-lifting session which included a few chin-ups and 120-lb underhand lat pull downs. If you’d asked me at the time, I would have said that I could stand to lose five or six pounds — though I wasn’t too concerned about it.

But now that I have lost weight, I’m interested in the process, especially since our culture spends so much time debating the most effective way to drop pounds.
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As mentioned here before, almost two weeks ago I managed, with grace and style (not!), to fracture my jaw. The oral surgeon thought it minor enough that we could proceed with “no treatment” other than a liquid diet. But on a followup visit, he decided the teeth were not realigning on their own — so now I have a mouthful of metal. This isn’t quite a wired jaw. It’s called “elastics” because rubber bands are used to link the upper and lower teeth, instead of wire, and I get to take the elastics off a few times a day to eat drink and brush my teeth.

The whole incident is quite unpleasant as you can imagine. I’m not in pain right now, but the pressure on the jaw is uncomfortable, and talking while the rubber bands are in place is really hard. So far I’ve lost around six pounds, which in other circumstances might be a good thing, but I’m now under 120-pounds for the first time since some long-ago college finals week. I really don’t want to keep losing at that rate for another month, so I need to deal better with diet.

But on to the important part: How does this affect the release of The Red: Trials?

The manuscript was still with my editor, Judith Tarr, when this first happened. She sent her editorial letter and comments last Friday, and gave the novel a nice thumb’s up: “My biggest problem was finding myself reading breathlessly, in pure reader mode, racing from scene to scene, in classic ‘can’t put down’ fashion, when I needed to slow down and put on my editor hat.”

As with First Light, her editing is insightful and thorough, so there is work to be done, but mostly in clarifying and drawing out details — there won’t be any major remodeling. I’ve made a solid start on the revision and hope to get back to it today. The goal is for the novel to be released in late May, and I’m still hoping to accomplish that.

I should have cover art to share with you soon. In the meantime, once again, if you’ve read and enjoyed The Red: First Light, please consider writing a brief reader review at Amazon and/or Barnes & Noble. There’s no need to say much — a line or two is fine — but reader reviews really do help with visibility. Thank you!

Stuff happens, right? You just never know when life is going to change direction. This past Wednesday, everything was going great. I had a Q&A at io9.com, which was a great publicity opportunity, and in the afternoon I went to the gym where I was able to run 3.5 miles on the treadmill in under thirty-two minutes, which is about peak condition for me, and something I haven’t been able to do in a while.

Then Thursday rolled around. As happens often, I heard feral chickens in the yard. They scratch the mulch out of my gardens, so I headed outside to chase them away. I trotted down the deck stairs, but as I reached the last step I somehow managed to trip. I was wearing old rubber slippers (probably better known to you as “flip flops”) that were too big for me. I’m not entirely clear on what happened, but I think I caught the toe of the slippers. At any rate, I went flying into the concrete, landed on my chin, and fractured my jaw. Such skillz! I have no idea what my hands were doing and why they didn’t instinctively reach out to break my fall. This is doubly strange because I have good reflexes. But it is what it is. (more…)