I was asked yesterday when my next livestream would be.

Over the last week I have taken a break from my YouTube videography and streams in order to work on finishing the first draft of the massively revised and expanded 2nd edition of Create Your Own Florida Food Forest.

Two days ago, I wrapped up the text and finished laying out the list of interior illustrations, of which there are two hundred. Now I need to go through all that I have been sent by the artists and figure out which illustrations still need to be assigned and which ones are done. When we decided to leave Grenada earlier this year I was moving quickly on illustrations and the text, then life fell apart for a while and I had to drop the project until I could pull things back together. Now that we are stable I decided to finish the first draft before doing anything else with illustrations so I could make sure they would be spaced well throughout the text and that I didn’t add or subtract any species after assignments.

I have also talked with my publisher and he would like me to run a crowd-funding campaign to see if we can add some really good extras to this book, like a hardcover option, interior color photos, more art and possibly even a leatherbound edition. I really like the idea, so we are working on that right now.

In other writing news, I am also almost done with the final re-write of GARDEN HEAT: A Jack Broccoli Novel, which is the second installment of my gardening thriller series. Both the interior pen and ink illustrations as well as the cover of this book are being completed by the excellent artist Jeremiah Humphries right now.

Here is a sample sketch:

I hope to finish the first draft this week and get it sent out for proofreading.

Winter is a dead time for gardening and is when my video views, pageviews and book sales are slow. Since this is the case, it just makes sense to work on my book projects now so the hard work can be done before spring when everything is really on fire.

I should get back to streaming but I am enjoying my evenings right now. My energy levels are super high, as I decided to completely quit drinking and smoking and go full carnivore at the same time. Zero carbs, zero sugar, no nicotine, no alcohol. Though I’m not a heavy drinker by any stretch, I have noticed that having a drink in the evening makes me sluggish the next day. Smoking a daily cigar also made me feel slow. Now that I have quit completely I have so much energy I feel like my brain is on overdrive. Heck, I even feel like running now and I never particularly liked running. It’s a good feeling. After three days the craving for nicotine went away, and I no longer feel like drinking either. Just had to break the habit of unwinding with a drink and a cigar.

Now in the evenings I read in the living room with a cup of mint tea, like a sissy.

But I awaken at dawn with the creative fire burning inside and a huge amount of energy. My writing and my art have both been easier to accomplish. I think I’ll just stay on this path – I like it. There are books that need to be written.

Have a great weekend.

*Image at top “Evening Read” by ShardsOfBlue is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0