Sam Sheridan's Blog, page 2
January 26, 2013
New Podcast with Jay
http://www.jaymohr.com/mohr-stories.php
And his Uncle Dan, who is an excellent character…let me know how it went. I know I’m not funny enough.
January 25, 2013
New Book in Stores!!!
Disaster Diaries is in stores now….
FRAT WARNING:
“Sheridan is a charming storyteller, and his prose is both thoughtful and playful… everything he has learned has not made him paranoid and believing that the end of the world is nigh; instead, it’s given him the confidence to face anything… An upbeat and entertaining survival guide for the end of the world.”
–Kirkus (starred review)
“With a funky sense of humor blended with straight-faced common sense, [Sheridan] not only addresses the long-term psychological trauma of disaster but adds the importance of learning basic first-aid techniques, firearms training, knife skills, hunting and living in the wild, and expertise behind the wheel for a real world escape and survival. As a quirky survivalist primer, Sheridan’s work spells out how to stay alive when the world goes topsy-turvy.”
–Publishers Weekly
“Sheridan’s matter-of-fact tone is informational and gripping, and he never descends into a paranoid, ‘us or them’ tone. Ultimately, learning to live through an apocalypse is about learning to be a human being; it takes an appetite for knowledge, the ability to cooperate, and most of all, adaptability. Anyone who thinks humankind is getting soft should read this book—no matter what happens, it’s clear that some of us will survive.”
—Daniel Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of
Amped, Robopocalypse, and How to Survive a Robot Uprising
“A rollicking, brave, and surprisingly affecting account of one man’s quest to prepare himself and his family for the end of the world. Traveling from desert to arctic waste, Sheridan hurls himself fearlessly into learning every kind of skill you might need once the lights go out, and finds that what you know isn’t as important as how you carry yourself—an apt lesson for every life, not just those beset by zombie hordes.”
—Jeff Wise, author of Extreme Fear: The Science of Your Mind in Danger
Some of us keep a “go bag” packed with flashlights, batteries, a first aid kit, and other essentials in case of an emergency. Others have a couple cases of bottled water and a stock of nonperishable food in the kitchen. Most of us feel pretty confident that we can make it through a few days without power, or we’d have what we need in order to evacuate our homes quickly. But after all the movies where a meteor hits Earth, all the news reports on tsunamis and wildfires, not to mention the buzz about the Mayan apocalypse in 2012, do we actually know what to do if a real disaster strikes? How would we survive if a catastrophe results in TEOTWAWKI (in survivalist lingo, “The End of the World As We Know It”)?
In THE DISASTER DIARIES: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Apocalypse (The Penguin Press, January 28, 2013), author and survival expert Sam Sheridan embarks on a quest to prepare himself and his family for the end of the world. He had traveled the world as an EMT, a mixed martial arts fighter, a sailor, a firefighter, and a construction worker in the South Pole. There was hardly any extreme survival situation he had not faced head-on. Yet when Sheridan became a father he was beset with nightmares about being unable to protect his son. If a rogue wave hit his beach community, would he be able to get out? If the power grid went down, did he have enough food and water for his family? Unable to set aside his fears, he decided instead to confront them by acquiring as many skills, in as many different doomsday situations, as he possibly could—including city-leveling earthquakes, being dropped into the wilderness with nothing but the clothes on his back, and even being attacked by a horde of zombies.
From training with an Olympic weightlifter to an apprenticeship in stealing cars with an ex-gang member, from an intense three week-long gun course in the hundred-degree heat of Alabama to agonizing lessons in Arctic survival and igloo-buidling, Sheridan left no stone unturned. Did he learn enough to survive if a meteor struck the earth? Sheridan can’t be one hundred percent sure, but as he points out, it would be a damn shame to live through the initial impact only to die a few days later because he didn’t know how to build a fire.
Action-packed, brave, and surprisingly moving, THE DISASTER DIARIES is irresistible armchair adventure reading for everyone curious about what it might take to survive in the post-apocalyptic world. Though deeply entertaining and often very funny, Sheridan’s book also helps expand our understanding of the world by urging us to be aware of our surroundings, to pay attention to intuition, and to take responsibility for what happens to us and our loved ones.
September 28, 2012
Jay Mohr Podcast
Did anyone listen to it? It was fun to do, love to hear anyone’s impressions. http://www.jaymohr.com/mohr-stories.php
September 9, 2012
Ward-Dawson
That was an incredible fight, and I think we saw sort of grand finished product of Ward’s evolution. It was so interesting to listen to Lampley and Kellerman talk about what they were seeing–because they couldn’t quite put their finger on it. It was way too complex and technical, although at moments they were right about certain things, the big picture kind of eluded them. Because it is extremely subtle what Ward does.
Andre has been brought along perfectly, exposed to all the things he needed, like a prospect from the 1930′s would be. He was never rushed into something to make a payday. He can do EVERYTHING, and I first saw it in the Miranda fight…he can box, he can bully, he can roughhouse, he can fight inside. Even Lampley noticed it, “there’s a little Hopkins in Ward,” he said last night, and he’s right. They both make you fight their fight and prevent you from ever, ever fighting your fight.
What Ward did, right off the bat, was nothing short of spectacular—he convinced Chad Dawson that the jab wasn’t going to work. That’s what he did in round 1. I was surprised that Lederman and I think Larry Merchant gave Chad that round, I think that’s because they saw what they expected to see, not what was really happening.
And then of the course of the fight you saw the Andre I wrote about in Fighter’s Mind—the execution. Not by wrecking ball, but by punishing shots that just wore Chad down, made his life a living Hell, so that he quit. Its hard to see those shots, or understand just how punishing that attack can be. The uppercuts inside. The straight right to the body.
In short, the fight was a masterpiece, and Andre Ward is going to only get better. And bask in the glow of watching something truly special. Not a Tyson-esque wrecking ball, but the utter breakdown of the other fighter by a surgeon. And my hat, as always, is off to Virgil Hunter, his trainer, because he has such unerring aim for the other fighter’s weakness.
August 30, 2012
New Book
On Amazon, BN and indie-something…http://www.indiebound.org/book/978159...
Can be pre-ordered. Finally you guys can see what I’ve been doing besides blogging!
August 29, 2012
May 2, 2012
December 26, 2011
The New Year, and the new book
Hey guys, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from the world's lamest blog. Sorry I never seem to update this thing worth a damn. But I turned in a rough draft of the new book, tentatively titled "The Disaster Diaries" and clocking in at 140 thousand words (which is way, way too epic). So I'm looking forward to trimming the fat, "murdering my darlings," and finishing the book. I doubt very much it will be published in 2012, though–but it might sneak in during the winter. Spring 2013 is more likely. We'll see–Penguin is a new experience for me.
Love and rockets
Sam
November 20, 2011
A blueprint for beating Hendo?
Shogun Hendo was an amazing fight, and I thought it could have easily been a draw, with Shogun taking the last two rounds as 10-8 rounds…I hate to see the guy who's coming on and dominating at the end of the fight lose because of points, but it is what it is.
I think Shogun really had a blueprint for beating Hendo–put him on his back. I thought of Hendo as a good challenge for Jones, but after that fight I have to imagine that Jones will put Hendo on his back and maul him.
And hats off to Wand for fighting a smart fight–he really kept his distance until he could make something happen with it. I thought Cung was going to have an easy night.
October 27, 2011
Enough
With the Steve Jobs worship…he was a businessman and an inventor, not Mahatma Gandhi or Louis Pasteur. He invented some neato, silly devices, he's no Edison. From the way he's being discussed you'd think he'd cured Cancer.
