My novel How to Kill Your Inner Fat Man is complete. I edited it down from 68,000 words to its current 44,000, so it's more of a novella. I will do one more edit and upload it in the next week or so. I'll probably charge $2.99 a copy. I have instructions for uploading an eBook on Amazon (for free, it seems) below.
Here is the synopsis for my completed novel:
There is a Fat Man wreaking havoc inside former bodybuilding and Olympic weightlifting champion Jeff McMahon. The Fat Man delights in the fact that Jeff, a stout 245 pounds, is a domesticated connoisseur of angel hair pasta with pine nut pesto, triple-decker barbecued tri-tip sandwiches larded with smoked gouda and extra spicy horseradish, and strawberry-rhubarb pie drowning in vanilla bean gelato.
In spite of a nagging feeling that he could benefit from losing 40 pounds or so, Jeff’s Inner Fat Man assures the erudite Critical Thinking professor that this bloated middle-aged suburbanite is perfectly healthy, that he carries his extra weight well, and that his girth after all is mostly muscle from his hardcore kettlebell workouts.
But the Fat Man cannot quell an excruciating burning sensation in Jeff’s left foot that feels like a blowtorch. Nor can this Fat Man suppress Jeff’s memory of reading somewhere that such pain in one’s extremities is associated with obesity-related onset diabetes. But no matter. The Inner Fat Man uses his silver-tongued persuasive powers to help Jeff go into denial about his “minor foot irritation” and to impede Jeff from making the connection between his thick waist and his burning foot.
But then one evening at a Christmas party in the Los Angeles suburbs for his seven-year-old twin daughters, Jeff meets the lean, muscular Max Penfold, a former Navy SEAL and current executive chef for Future-Lodge, a tech company that makes solar-powered rocket ships, burglar-chasing drones, and other kinds of “disruptive” innovations. Upon hearing of Jeff’s burning foot, Max persuades Jeff to go on a Paleo diet, to depend on Max as his weight-loss mentor, and to chronicle his melting fat in a journal, which Jeff titles How to Kill Your Inner Fat Man.
Just as Arthur Dent was saved from the destruction of Planet Earth at the last moment in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Jeff McMahon is saved from his own fatness by his guide, Max Penfold. Adhering to the code of the Samurai warrior, Max steers Jeff on an Odyssey to Thinness, helps his friend reclaim his manhood, and helps Jeff conquer his Inner Fat Man, resulting in a loss of 40 pounds, a stunning metamorphosis that not only results in the end of Jeff’s burning foot and all his other diabetic symptoms, but helps Jeff make a radical departure from society’s false promises of unbridled consumer gratification and self-indulgence.
Just as Walter White from Breaking Bad was compelled to become “The Danger” to a world that had dismissed him as an irrelevance and a joke, Jeff McMahon is driven to become The Master of his insidious inner glutton, and he chronicles his triumph in a manifesto that is in turns funny, philosophical, and useful to those languishing under the weight of their own rapacious appetites.
About the Author
Just like his fictional alter ego Jeff McMahon, writer Jeff McMahon was a former competitive bodybuilder and Olympic weightlifter who eventually slogged through middle age at a weight of 245 with burning neuropathy in his left foot. And like Jeff McMahon, McMahon found a mentor at a Christmas party, the executive chef at SpaceX and a former United States Marine, Ted Cizma, who navigated McMahon away from a life of self-loathing gluttony to one of pride and self-discipline.
Most likely, I'll use the more recent photo at the top of the post, or I may use the one capturing my svelte teenage years for the novel's cover. Or I'll publish the photo from my svelte teenage years. What I find puzzling about the photo is that it has evidence of color fade and damage that I never noticed before. For example, the photo is not damaged from a time I uploaded it in 2008 from a different iMac. Hmmmm.
If anyone wants to publish their eBook on Amazon, here are some helpful links:
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