Author M.M. Shelley

Dead Relatives is now on Amazon.com and will soon be on Smashwords, B&N and IBOOKS I will post the links as they become available! Also my other book Mishap & Chaos will be going on tour in January and so I decided that while it's on tour it will be available for $0.99. I hope that everyone has a Happy and Safe New Year!

I first started learning martial arts when I was fifteen and my very first class I speant learning how to throw a good punch. Having four brothers it should have been easy, but ... I was horrible. Also learning how to roll was most difficult for me I think it may have been because when I was seven I broke my elbow in two places and tore through the muscle-- I was quite the daredevil. After my broken elbow I decided to play more safe. And as a side note learning how to do a Kung Fu roll where you use your arm and elbow to balance was not fun. In 2007 I began learning the style of  Tai Shing Pek Kwar, and it has been a rewarding and challenging journey ever since. This video shows two basic self defense techniques that anyone can use.

So far this week I've written 1100 words on Monday, 1250 on Tuesday and 1100 again today. I have not been able to workout at all as I've been fighting a cold. Which means I am losing out on learning the new forms in my Kung Fu class. I'll be able to learn them when I go back, but I'm missing the step by step training and I will have to pick them up quickly before we begin training the next form. This Saturday I'm taking two of my nieces to see Wicked, it's what they told me they wanted for Christmas and I love that they enjoy going to the theatre.

This week I've been averaging 1500 words a day some days a bit more. I started working on two stories at once, I like that they are completely different from each other. I'm not so sure if its a good idea to work on them both at the same time I know that other writers do this and do not have a problem.  My goals for the rest of this week are to read a book from my pile and to finish the week strong by continuing with my 1500 a day word count. I will let you know on Sunday how it goes.

I have been making time for my martial arts training in between work and my writing. At the moment I am training the basic patterns steps. This is important because it teaches muscle memory, in the video you will see that before Master Furtado turns he looks first this helps in order to avoid an attacker and so that you don't walk right into one. There are different patterns, this video shows patterns 1 - 5 and each pattern has different arm and hand movements, again this is repeated for muscle memory. If you notice at the end of each pattern Master Furtado bows, this is a reminder to always stay humble. Martial arts is more then about the art of war, it is about the art of understanding and to train hard and diligently.

I've missed a couple of my Row80 check ins, I have been busy writing I just have not logged on to update my progress! In my last post  I talked about FABA TV and their fundraiser, well good news they did have a good turn out and raised $3,688 for Covenant House which is a Charity for homeless teens. I am making progress on the third book in my mishap trilogy- Mishap and Retribution and I am looking at a February release. My Zombie Chronicles which is really a tongue-n-cheek series is with my editor which means Dead Relatives should be out this month. My book tour for Mishap and Chaos will be running during January! I also created a character guide on my website and I plan on adding a brief history of the war between the Leonids and Perseids. I'm not sure how I'm going to do that, I have a few ideas that  I think will be fun.