Saturday Morning Cereal and Cartoons

When I was a little boy and living in Gridley Kansas, I remember waking up Saturday mornings with my brothers to watch Saturday morning cartoons. My younger brother Abe, and I would get up and head into the kitchen and poor our selves a cereal bowl of whatever cereal we had in the house that week.

My older brother Reza would follow behind us by poring himself a bowl of cereal as well. But he never just poured himself a normal bowl of cereal. No, I remember Reza taking the breakfast cereal experience to the whole new level. He would get out a clear mixing bowl from the cupboard and emptying the remaining cereal from the box into the bowl. Then he would top it off by drowning the whole thing in more milk than my 8-year-old self at the time could ever imagine drinking.

Together, all three of us would all carefully make our way to the living room with our cereal, turn on the TV and watch saturday morning cartoons. Bugs Bunny, Tom & Jerry or some other cartoon program that was popular at the time.

Today is my diet cheat day. I have decided to revisit these fond memories of my past by poring myself a mixing bowl of cereal (Apple Jacks) and watching Tom & Jerry. I really hope everyone is having as awesome of a Saturday morning as I am.

‘All That Matters’ Is Now Available On The Kindle!

I am so excited to tell the world today that my first book ‘All That Matters‘, is now available for the Amazon Kindle (US, UK, DE) e-book reader. The book is free of all DRM and only costs $0.99! 

‘All That Matters’ has been the result of ten months of hard, but incredibly fun and creative work. Staring late last September I wrote multiple drafts of the story to get the right flow and timing down. Hired a proofreader to go through the book and make sure all the ‘I’ where dotted and ‘t’ were crossed. Gave out several copies of the book to willing readers to make sure it was an enjoyable story. Formatted the book for various e-book readers. Designed a book cover. And created a website for the book at www.AllThatMattersTheBook.com. There anyone can learn more about the book and download the first three chapters for free! 

I have a little bit more work to do before the book will be available for the Barnes & Noble Nook, or from Apple’s iBooks store and others ebook retailers, but I will make an announcement the moment they are available.

‘All That Matters’ also has a listing on GoodReads.com which is a great website for people who like to read books, track the books they read with their friends, and follow authors. Think of it like Google+, only for books. So please be sure to check it out along with my GoodReads.com author page and Amazon Author page.

‘All That Matters’ Kindle Book Cover

All That Matters Kindle Cover
All That Matters Kindle Cover

This is pretty great! I recently asked my readers to help me pick out a cover for my book ‘All That Matters’. Today I was able to load the winning cover and the entire book up on my kindle and it looks beautiful!

It’s a surreal feeling to be holding my own book like this. All the hard work and time I have put into this project has produced something I am so proud of. I can’t wait for everyone else to be able to get their hands on it.

I plan to launch ‘All That Matters’ publicly in the next few days. At first the book will be available as a download for the Amazon Kindle. Then in the following days I plan to make it available for the Barnes & Noble Nook, and most other ebook readers. There will also be the option to buy a physical copy of the book if you want. I am doing this one step at a time because the whole process is still all new to me.

I want to thank everyone for all your amazing support and encouragement throughout this process. It has ment the world to me.

The Winning Book Cover ‘All That Matters’

All That Matters Book Cover
The Winning Book Cover for 'All That Matters'

I want to thank everyone who took the time to comment on my blog, Twitter, Google+ and E-mail me their favorite book cover for ‘All That Matters’. The response I got was great and I am so excited to show off the winning cover to everyone.

Now I am going to work on getting this bad boy on my Kindle and launching my book in the next couple of days.

Molly, The Office Pirate Bird

Youseph with MollyI don’t have a glamorous day job by any means. (I am still waiting for PIXAR, Apple, or ILM to call me back.) What I do have at work are animals. This is the first place I have ever worked that allows you to bring in your own pets. Which is nice at times.

One of the pets we have is an office bird named Molly who usually hangs out in the Physical Therapy (PT) department most of the day. Sometimes when employees leave the department to assist people, Molly is left all alone and starts to squawk. When this happens I normally run to her rescue and let her hang out on my shoulder while I work while I pretend to be a pirate. (I have the beard for it don’t you think?) At least until someone from PT comes to get her.

I thought I would share some photos of Molly hanging out with me and destroying my desk. She is quite fond of my iPhone head phones.