business

Events I’m Excited About

By / January 4, 2013 / 1 Comment

I’ve kept my events for 2013 close to home and fairly sparse. Home is where I want to be this year and I have plenty of projects to keep me busy all year long. However there are a few events coming up that I’m excited to be involved with.

Orem Writes: Talking about Blogging
January 30 7pm Orem Library.
For this event C. Jane Kendrick and I will be talking about our experiences with blogging and answering audience questions. I’ve never met Ms. Kendrick before, but I’m very excited to get a chance to talk to her because she blogs like I do, where telling stories on the blog is the point of writing rather than using the blog as a promotional tool. I’ve been reading her blog regularly for the last month (ever since I discovered it) and thoroughly enjoy it.

Life, The Universe, and Everything Symposium
February 14-16 Downtown Provo Marriott
This is an event that Howard and I enjoy every year. If you are interested in writing genre fiction or in talking about it, you simply can not get a better event for the price. I haven’t seen an official schedule yet, but Howard and I are usually teaching something interesting during the event. When we’re not teaching, you’ll be able to find us in the dealer’s room where we’ll have set up shop under the big Schlock Mercenary sign. I’ll definitely have copies of Hold on to Your Horses and Cobble Stones available. Depending on how quickly I work I may even have the 2012 edition of Cobble Stones. Please stop by and say hello.

LDS Storymakers Conference
May 10-11 Downtown Provo Marriott and Conference Center
I’m really excited about this conference. They’ve given me an entire hour to talk about blogging, why I love it, and how a blog can be more than just a marketing tool for authors. I expect this presentation will be greatly shaped by my conversation with Ms. Kendrick in January. I’m also teaching a class on structuring your life to support creativity. Howard is teaching World Building and Focused Practice. The conference is more expensive and it definitely teaches from and to and LDS viewpoint, but it offers a world of education to anyone seeking to write as a career. Well worth the time and expense.

Writing Excuses Workshop and Retreat
June 10-16 Chattanooga TN
Registration for this event is full this year. Though you can still apply for a scholarship spot until January 15th. Howard, Brandon, Dan, and Mary will all be there running the event. My attendance is probable, but there are some family commitments which are in direct conflict and I can’t say for certain how I’ll be able to resolve those conflicts. Hopefully this retreat will be such a huge success that they’ll schedule another one.

In the second six months of the year, I don’t have any professional appearances scheduled. Which is fine, because that seems pretty far away.

Thoughts that have Accumulated While Shipping Packages

By / December 5, 2012 / 10 Comments

I can tell it is shipping season by looking at my hands. They are dry from handling all the paper. The fingertips are sore from holding the edges of cardboard in place while I fold boxes. I have scratches and scrapes on the backs of my fingers from sliding product into boxes. I often have a cut or two from accidentally scraping some part of my hands against the cutting surface of the tape dispenser. Also my right wrist develops an ache.

I re-watched Brave on Monday night. It is a beautiful film that consistently manages to lance open unexpected emotional sores. Apparently I have unresolved emotional conflicts relating to freedom vs. restraint and Mother Daughter relationship struggles. I love Merida. I want to be Merida. Yet I am the mother. This makes me sad. It also makes me aware of how much depends upon what a reader/viewer brings with them to the story. No one else I know has such strong emotional reactions to this film in the places that I have them. I suspect I need to periodically return to the film to keep digging out what causes me to be upset. Also because it is a beautiful and fun film.

Two kids, two pocket knives, and several bars of soap results in soap carvings and soap dust coating one half of the kitchen. In theory soap dust is easy to clean up, but in truth it has to be carefully managed or one just ends up with soap scum on every available surface. Also, the kids are discovering that inadequately cleaned soap dust does not taste good. If soap carving is still a thing come spring, it will be evicted from the house.

My meal planning needs an overhaul. Frozen pizza should not be a staple.

When googling around to find answers for computer problems, it is best to picture yourself treading through swampy, snake-infested waters. Check multiple sources and think three times before downloading any “solutions.” Knowing this is half of what made me so panicked and exhausted when contemplating fixing my computer. The landscape out there changes fast and I don’t speak the native language.

The shipping of unsketched calendars is all done. Only sketched calendars to go. This is good since I’m starting to get emails from folks worried about Christmas presents. I don’t want to add to their stress.

Tomorrow I need to get my act together, conquer the laundry, and pay more attention to the kids and their homework. They’re pretty good at getting the daily stuff done, but I’m certain some longer-term projects are falling through the cracks.

Computer Issue Resolved

By / December 5, 2012

Monday, in the middle of frantic shipping, my computer declared that I had no space left on the hard drive. This did not make the day better.

Tuesday, I cleared off enough files to give me space to work. I also kept a log of space usage and watched the space I’d cleared gradually get eaten up. I focused on getting work done, but noticed that internet connectivity had no effect, so my computer was not infected with malware. A friend suggested that I had some stray program creating a log file. He pointed me at a program called WinDirStat (Short for Windows Directory Statistics).

Wednesday, I continued to baby my computer, then finally installed WinDirStat. Within minutes it showed me that Kaspersky was using up over 700 gigs of space. All of that space was text log files. One file alone was 59GB. I deleted them and now I have 748GB of free space on my computer. I could design 250 books in that space. I then opened up Kaspersky to see why on earth it was making massive log files. The only thing I could find was in the settings, under System Watcher, there was a little check box for “save activity log.” I unchecked that box.

Tomorrow, I’ll be keeping an eye out to make sure that Kaspersky doesn’t start filling up space again. I’ll also call their customer support line to see if they have any idea why it happened and how to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Calcifer also has Kaspersky and does not have this problem at all. On the other hand, if it does happen again I know how to fix it, which is very empowering. I no longer have to be afraid that my computer will randomly stop working. I like not being afraid.

In tangential news, the little mini laptop, which I thought had the same problem, has a different problem entirely. It is not losing memory. It just doesn’t have enough. Windows 7 requires 14GB and the hard drive is only 16GB big. Upgrading that machine to Windows 7 was a mistake. Ah hindsight. WinDirStat is an excellent program and helped me solve both issues.

Projects in the Tayler Household

By / November 14, 2012

There are six people in our house. We are all people with goals and projects. As a family we have to adjust and support each other in succeeding at these projects, it often turns into a huge juggling act. As a demonstration I’m going to list the current projects in process.

Personal Growth: One of the primary purposes of our family is to create a safe space where the family members can learn how to be better and kinder human beings. All of us are going through developmental stages (stages do not stop in adulthood.) All of us have lessons to learn and we all have a responsibility to try to help and support family members who are struggling.

Schlock Mercenary: This is a project that has no completion date. In order to support Schlock we all have to make sure that Howard has time and space to script, pencil, and ink at least a week of comics during each week that passes. Sometimes this means that Howard gets excused from household chores and the rest of us have to pick up the slack.

Kiki’s College preparations: Kiki will graduate from high school in the spring. This is the year for her to decide what comes next. Thus far she has picked a college, been accepted to it, and gotten her first small scholarship. We still need to arrange for housing, start helping her accumulate the household and art items she’ll need, apply for lots more funding, and ride the emotional arcs of launching into adulthood.

Link’s Eagle Scout push: Link has been involved in scouting since he was eleven. Mostly he has been coasting along doing whatever his troop decided on. Then he slowed to a stand still, no longer content to just follow. Several weeks ago he pulled out his scouting binder and realized he was four merit badges away from being able to begin an Eagle Scout application. He’ll earn the last of those badges today. Up ahead: big service project and lots of paperwork.

Gleek’s Choirs: Gleek joined her school choir last September. Since then, she has developed a love for her choir teacher and for singing in general. To support her in this, there are extra trips to the school for her practices. We also attend her concerts. She was recently invited to join a holiday children’s choir. Again there is a time commitment for practices and performances.

Howard’s prose writing: Writing prose is something Howard has wanted to do for a long time. We’ve been trying to make space for it and this year we finally have. Howard wrote the story in Space Eldrich and is currently one third of the way through another project that is under contract. This writing eats up time that could be spent on Schlock work or family, but it helps Howard build the secondary career that he has been wanting. Also it makes him happy.

Body Politic: This is the next Schlock book. In order to get it ready for print I have to do the layout work. Howard needs to write and draw a bonus story, create margin art, and draw cover art.

Sandra’s novel: I’m working on a novel. It has a loose outline, some characters, some themes, and a beginning. In theory I’m working on it a little every day.

Kiki’s art: Kiki has an AP art class for which she creates an art piece every single week. On top of that she sketches to push her skills. She’s also nearly ready to begin taking paid commission work. Freelance artist is what she wants to be, and we’re trying to help her build the foundations of that business.

Household maintenance: Houses need tending. Some of it is routine clutter removal and surface cleaning. But our house is in need of some renewal and renovation. We all try to pitch in and get the work done.

Howard’s miniatures: Painting miniatures is Howard’s hobby, the thing he does just because he enjoys it. We make time and space for him to do this.

Strength of Wild Horses: This is my next picture book project. It is drafted. I’ve got commentary on it that I need to dig into and revise the text. After that I need to lay ground work to kickstart the project.

The family photo books: These are books full of photos, artwork, and stories which take place during each calendar year. The book for 2011 is nearly complete. Work on the 2012 book will follow immediately.

One Cobble at a Time: This blog definitely counts as an ongoing project. The time which I spend on blog entries could be spent on other things. There is the additional project each year when I take all the entries from the prior year and have them bound into book form. I also intend to create a second Cobblestones book out of essays I wrote in 2012.

Patch’s book report: He has one every month. They’re usually very specific and detailed in their requirements. This month he has to read non-fiction books about animals then create a booklet full of information on those animals.

Gleek’s book report and homework: The homework load for Gleek is significant, but she is just tracking it and getting it all done. The one item for which she needs help is creating a stuffed turkey. The book report information will be on his tail feathers.

Christmas and Thanksgiving: The creation of a holiday celebration is always a project. All the family members have to collaborate on decorating, cooking, selecting gifts, and celebrating. It requires patience and cooperation to pull off.

Holiday shipping: The pace of sales through our online store has already picked up. That will only increase in the next few weeks. Processing orders and filling packages takes time which could be spent on other things.

The 2013 calendar: Pre-orders are under way. Soon we’ll be swapping over into shipping mode. This is when the entire family room is reorganized into a shipping center. The kids help with the work and do not complain about the disruption in their usual routines.

I think that’s it. Certainly the list is already long enough to fracture the attention of anyone who needs to track it. Like me. Many of these projects will reach completion in December. Then January can bring new projects.

Edited November 14, 2012 (one day later): This morning Link said “So when are we going to get my driver’s learning permit?” So, add Teach Link to Drive to the family project list.

All I Can Do

By / October 25, 2012 / 2 Comments

…for we know that it is by grace we are saved, after all we can do.
2 Nephi 25:23

I always trip over that “after all we can do” part of the verse. I believe it too thoroughly, trying to make the job of giving grace and blessings easy for God, as if He is more likely to grant them that way. In fact, I try my very hardest to put God out of work by doing all the work myself.

Then I hit a place like this week, where the things I want most are out of my control. Howard is in the midst of plotting the climax of the current Schlock storyline. He’s gathering all the threads of story to pull them together into a satisfying conclusion and there are threads everywhere. I know he can do this, he is brilliant with this, but the only help I can provide is to listen when he needs to talk plot and to read the occasional script.

Howard is also working hard on a yet-to-be-announced prose project. I’m excited that he gets to do this project. I love that he is getting to write a story for which he does not have to draw pictures. It lets Howard grow in new ways and that is good. But growth is not easy and I can’t write the words for him.

Then there is the calendar project. We need the calendar to launch our holiday season and pay for Christmas. It will get done in plenty of time. Howard is already half done with the line art and a third done with the coloring. Again, there is nothing I can do except support Howard’s efforts.
And pray.
Because when I run out of things to do, I have to acknowledge how much of my life is beyond my control. I turn to deity and pray for Howard’s good health, that the hand pain will stay away, that he’ll be inspired with the story bits he needs, that he’ll have a run of good work days, that he won’t feel too stressed or depressed or frustrated.

I read the scripture again and it feels very odd that all I can do is support and pray. I want something else, something active. I want my writing to be part of the solution, right now it adds an additional time burden without providing anything measurable in terms of payment. I want to be filling store orders, shipping merchandise to excited customers, but the orders ebb and flow. We’re currently in a lull before the holiday rush. Our next big merchandise push will be for the calendar, which is not yet ready.

I’ve done all I can do, now I need to exercise faith. Faith in Howard, who has always come through. Faith in God, who has already–repeatedly–informed me that everything is going to be fine. I know it is going to be fine, I just want to get to the part where it already is. I want to have things to do again, work which obviously helps to support our family financially. I wish I could carry more of the financial burden; Howard has been over burdened with work for years. Instead I must wait patiently in this one area of my life and focus my doing on the parenting, household, writing, and gardening parts of my life. It is not as though I lack for things to do, I’m just antsy like a child who has many things but wants something else. I must learn to wait and trust. That is all I can do.

The Steps to Deciding on Merchandise and then Managing It

By / October 4, 2012

My inventory day yesterday required me to stare at all of the various merchandise that we’ve made over the last few years. Then I started thinking about the decision making process behind creating that merchandise and I thought it might be useful to outline how that works.

1. Cool idea! This is the fun part of creating merchandise, before any work is invested. We’re able to say wouldn’t it be cool if… we had miniatures, there were a t-shirt with a maxim on it, we had schlock patches. Howard and I come up with fun ideas all the time. Fans come up with them too and tell us about them. They have to pass the rest of the steps before they can exist.

2. Broad appeal? For every cool idea, Howard and I have a discussion of whether it will appeal to most Schlock fans or if it will only interest a few. No merchandise will interest everyone, but the more people we can interest the better. Other wise we have a basement full of stuff that no one is buying. Books and calendars interest many fans, water bottles and miniatures only interest a few. We can still make the lower interest items, but it affects pricing and quantities.

3. Costs. There are different kinds of costs involved in merchandise. Production costs are the most obvious. We have to find a supplier who manufactures the merchandise we want. We would dearly love a bowl-sized yellow mug printed with Tub of Happiness, but we’ve never found a supplier who can do it the way we imagine. Space is another cost. Bowl size mugs are physically large and I only have so much room to store things. Every inch of space I give to mug storage can not be used for book storage–and books sell better. There are costs in effort as well. T-shirts take lots of effort because I have to track sizes as well as styles. Merchandise also gets rejected because of shipping concerns. We tend to avoid things that break easily in transit. We also avoid things which require new packing methods. I’m already stocking eight different types of shipping containers. Storing those shipping supplies also takes up space.

4. Price point. We have to evaluate all the various costs of the item against the price we think people are willing to pay. Some really cool ideas are simply not profitable because they cost too much for the amount of money they can earn.

5. Budget evaluation. We only have so much money available to fund new merchandise. If we have to choose between printing a book and making goopy Schlock in a cup, the books are going to win every time. Every item of merchandise we choose means there are at least three others which we can’t fund.

6. Design. All of the above steps are discussion and research. We can do those in the space of an hour if things line up right. This one is when Howard commits art. We have to find space in Howard’s schedule to create whatever thing we’ve pictured. Many cool merchandise items stall in this stage for a very long time. Sometimes we even lose track of them because we’re too busy.

7. Production. This stage begins with sending files to a supplier. Usually there are a couple of rounds of merchandise approval, but mostly this stage is made of waiting.

8. Marketing. With merchandise in hand we have to sell it. Sometimes the marketing begins before the design and production phases. When we run a pre-order it is often to answer the questions of appeal and quantity. It also helps to build interest in the merchandise. Older merchandise still benefits from marketing attention. Most of our marketing plans are “Howard will announce it from the Schlock blog and tweet it.” This works great for Schlock merch. It did not work well when we put out Hold on to Your Horses and realized that Howard’s audience is not mine. For non-established businesses the marketing discussion needs to be up there around step 3, before any money is spent.

9. Inventory management. And now we’ve come full circle back to my inventory day. I have to keep track of all the merchandise so that I do not sell more than we have in stock. It is also critical that I be able to find merchandise and ship it within a day or so of when it is ordered. I have to manage both the physical inventory in my house and the inventory listed in the online store to make sure that they match each other.

Merchandise is a lot of work, but there are rewards that aren’t measured in money. We love the moment when someone walks up to our booth at a convention and lights up “Oh I have to have that t-shirt! It is perfect!” We agree. It’s why we made the shirt. I just wish that more of the cool ideas passed the rest of the steps into reality.

Inventory Day at the Schlock Warehouse

By / October 3, 2012 / 1 Comment

When my front room looks like this:

Then I know it is time to have an inventory day. These packages are the returned merchandise from Chicon with a couple of boxes of books from the UVU Book Academy thrown in for good measure. The Chicon boxes only just arrived because the truck they were in had some cross country adventures on the way back to us. Fortunately the merchandise inside was all fine, just the boxes were battered by being shipped across the country and back again.

An inventory day is when I sort through boxes and put all the merchandise back on the shelves in my shipping room so that I can find it again when I need it. Sometimes an inventory day also requires me to re-arrange my storage arrangements as merchandise sells out and other merchandise is added. Today I’ll definitely be needing to rearrange because one of the things which arrived from Chicago were these:

We have 14 of them and I’ll be putting them into the store as soon as I get some proper product photos taken. That will happen after I’ve figured out where to store them that is not in my front room. The Schlock Mercenary shipping and warehousing department takes up an entire unfinished room in our basement.


There are also two storage units off site where we store large pallets full of boxes of books.
My shipping station is set up more or less in the middle of the room where I’ve got easy access to most of the merchandise.

You can see that I keep the most shipped inventory close along with various sizes of boxes and packing paper. I print invoices and postage in my office, but then I stand at the shipping station to pack the boxes. We usually average between five and ten orders per week during most of the year. November and December tend to average ten to twenty orders per week. During pre-orders we’ll get anywhere from a hundred to a thousand orders depending on what shiny thing we’ve put up for sale. The massive pre-orders are handled differently from the daily shipping.

One of the fun things about an inventory day is discovering that of the ten copies of Hold on to Your Horses that I sent to Chicon, only one came back. One is the perfect number of books to have after a convention, because I know that I sold as many as possible and there is only one left to ship home. Cobble Stones also only had a single copy return.

In addition to all of the Chicon packages, we had a single package from GenCon. The T-shirt collection we had in storage there had become somewhat random. We decided to ship them all home and re-stock completely next year. The box contained some shirt designs which we’ve discontinued.

I put them all into our store so that we can clear out the old inventory and make way for new things. Selling the old inventory makes physical space and provides the funds necessary to make new things.

Sorting through all the boxes showed me that it was time to upgrade one of our stacked pallets into a shelf. So that is my next task for today: assembling shelving. At the end of it all, I will have gone up and down the stairs countless numbers of times. I suppose I can call it exercise. Putting the storage and work space in the basement means that we end up carrying things up and down stairs regularly. Until we’re able to budget for an actual warehouse/office this is the best solution we’ve got.

Cost Benefit Analysis on a Convention

By / September 5, 2012

The first day after a convention is for sleeping off the exhaustion, but the next day is for cost benefit analysis. A successful convention gives more than it costs in emotional, career, and financial rewards. We’ve had lots of successful conventions. Sometimes the sales aren’t great, but a business contact is made which opens up a world of new possibilities. Other times there are no particularly shiny business opportunities and the sales are mediocre, but we get to share laughter and conversations with lots of good people. There are always good things and bad in every show. Howard comes home and unpacks his brain, complaining of the unpleasant things, joyfully telling about the fun stuff. As he talks, we try to figure out how the next show could be made better.

Sadly Chicon (WorldCon 70) lands in the red for us. Howard had lots of fun. He’s spent hours telling me about conversations with fans, writers, personal heroes, and friends. He had our dream team of booth help, a crew that stuck with him not just for retail, but also who bolstered him up during the emotional ride of the Hugos. We have fun pictures, and business cards of people to contact after the show. Unfortunately we planned poorly and spent too much. Taken over all, the show simply did not pay all that back. Howard began the show with a slight emotional deficit because of the low buffer and GenCon fatigue. We figured that sales in Chicago would be higher than they were in Reno since the convention itself would be larger. We budgeted accordingly, arranging to have extra booth help and ship the necessary product to support that. Our expenses where higher than they had ever been before. This was not helped by the fact that Chicago kept surprising us with extra fees for things like parking. We did not lose money. The booth sales covered our expenses, but not enough to pay for the week of lost work, or the stress involved in preparing and running the booth. We sold less in Chicago than we did in Reno.

Our analysis of why is ongoing. It was certainly not our help which was fantastic. The booth was always hopping with conversation and transactions. The truth is that retail sales are always capricious. The dedicated fans will always find us and brighten Howard’s day by standing there to talk to him while he draws. They are our bread and butter, the reason we are able to continue to do this crazy work, which doesn’t seem like it should be able to support a family of six and a colorist. We love the people who seek out Howard. But if the dealers’ room is hidden off in a corner (as it was in Chicago) it reduces foot traffic. Fewer people wander by the booth to be exposed to Schlock. Sometimes there is just a mis-match between the general convention populace and Schlock Mercenary. The comic can’t appeal to everyone. It appealed to a smaller proportion of people in Chicago than it did in other areas of the country. That happens too. Either that, or a larger portion had already bought stuff online. We misjudged and let the cost of coming nearly wipe out profits.

If it were only insufficient profits, the conversations with people would be more than enough to balance out the emotional ledger, however Chicon also had the Hugo awards. Being nominated is a huge honor, and a tremendous benefit to Howard personally and to Schlock Mercenary as a business. All weekend Howard had people coming up and telling him that they had discovered Schlock because of the Hugo nominee packet. But once Howard arrives at WorldCon, he starts to feel the strain of hope. He begins to realize that he’d really love to bring home a Hugo trophy and he’s probably not going to. Then in self defense, he tries to negate that hope, which leads to him denigrating his own work to himself inside his head. It becomes a weekend-long effort to try to not think about it too much, while all the time people are coming up to wish him luck. (Some of them do so while confessing that they voted for someone else. Yes. People do that. Lots. Hint: if you didn’t vote for someone, the appropriate thing to say is either nothing at all or “Good luck. I’m rooting for you.” Not “I didn’t vote for you because _______, but I’ll vote for you next year.” Pretty much anything other than “good luck” is pouring gasoline on the flame of creative neuroses. You do not have to fell guilty or apologize for your votes. Howard is strong and can laugh this type of thing off. Not everyone can.) Win or lose, the Hugos require a huge emotional expenditure. Howard works hard to find his fellow nominated friends and help them deal with the stress. He struggles to find helpful words. He tries to make sure that he is always gracious no matter how people approach him, even if what they say manages to gut-punch him right in his insecurities. It is exhausting and exciting and thrilling. But ultimately even excitement is exhausting. High emotions always take a toll, even if they’re positive emotions.

Presumably winning a trophy pays for all of that effort, someday maybe we’ll be able to report how that works. However, I’ve spoken to people who’ve won and they tell me that having the statue can make the next project harder to tackle, the fear of not being able to live up to prior success is real and can be crippling. There is also the emotional ride of having won when your friends didn’t. Whether or not Howard came home with a Hugo, I knew this week would require some emotional rebalancing.

Special note to anyone who may, in the future, be arranging the pre-Hugo ceremony photography. It can be a mad scramble to get this done in the time allotted. I know it is a hard job, like herding cats. People don’t hear announcements or disregard them. However, if you run out of time before the ceremony, do not ask the losers to come back after the awards are handed out and be photographed with the winners. Just don’t. Those who lose do not have the emotional resources to put on happy faces for the camera. The winners are in shock and may feel guilty for winning over the others in their category. Don’t make them stand together while they are still in the first hour of processing this emotional shift. Before the ceremony it is “all in this boat together” after it is different. If you don’t get the picture before the ceremony, let it go.

Also rolled up in the weekend was my absence and the reasons for it. I was pretty miserable because I was sad to miss out on friends and even more because I was actively working to disconnect the anxiety triggers which I’ve had connected to WorldCon since last year. “Disconnecting anxiety triggers” is a lot like defusing bombs, very tense and no fun at all. I tried not to let any of that leak into Howard’s experience of the event, but I was only partially successful because he is perceptive and I am honest. All of which is enough for it’s own story sometime, so I’ll leave it at that.

Among the good gifts that Chicon gave to us, are some valuable lessons. As we pick apart what worked and what didn’t, we’re better able to plan for future conventions. The glaringly obvious thing is that we have to figure out how to make WorldCon in San Antonio cost less. If we can lower the financial and emotional costs of the event, then the rewards will be sufficient to have Howard coming home excited for the next event. Obviously we need to spend less money setting up the booth, but we also need to have more comics in the buffer so that the week off of work does not feel so expensive. We need to make time for Howard to play. There were friends that Howard did not get to spend time with because he was tied down at the booth. We need to figure out how to get Howard to allow himself to play, to recognize that the emotional rewards of a convention are far more important than the financial ones. If he gives up most of the emotional rewards in pursuit of financial ones, his convention experience suffers. I think I’ve managed to locate my personal emotional landmines surrounding WorldCon, which will make next year easier. There’s more detail and quite a lot of talking in circles as we sort it out. In the end we don’t regret Chicon, we just have a list of what to do differently.

If you are one of the people who came to tell Howard you love Schlock. Thank you. If you bought something, or just said hello, or asked Howard for advice, or chatted with him at a party, then you are the reason that Chicon was not a disaster for us. You are the reason that Howard came home determined to pour his effort into the comic, instead of collapsing into a fugue of despair. To paraphrase from a Doctor Who episode: Chicon for Howard was divided into piles of good things and piles of hard things. The fact that, at the end, the pile of hard things was a little bit bigger is our fault and does not at all subtract from the goodness of the good things. If you did anything at all to add to Howard’s pile of good things. Thank you. He’s been telling me about what you did and I am grateful.

We live, we learn, we move onward.

A Visual on the Invasion of Shirts

By / August 9, 2012

Pretty much every flat surface in my family room is covered in shirts.

And that is only counting the Scorch Marks shirt. Most of the Tagon’s Toughs shirts have been stowed elsewhere, except for a few which are destined to go into packages later this afternoon.

“Elsewhere” is currently located in my office until I get the storage space reconfigured to allow for shirts.

Those big white boxes are full of folded shirts. Next I get to begin the part of this shirt invasion that I really like, which is sending all these shirts to their new homes. Time to print some postage.

Shirts take over my life

By / August 8, 2012

My day has been all about t-shirts and making five dozen little judgement calls about what to ship, how to ship it, and when to ship it. The fried brain situation is not helped by the fact that I’m actually managing four different t shirt priority streams. There are the shirts which have been pre-ordered and need to go into the mail as soon as possible. Then there are the shirts which need to go to GenCon. Similar quantities of shirts need to ship to WorldCon. I also have to sort stock for my storage room so that we have ongoing inventory. This means that I need to reorganize my storage room so that I have room for the shirts, water bottles, and shopping bags. New shelving may be required, but I have to finish clearing out mess first. Each of these different priority streams vies for my attention and as a result I often feel a bit frozen. I keep having to walk away from all of it to clear my head. So I go eat, or read, or watch fifteen minutes of a show until my brain pops up with: Do This Next. Then I get up and do that thing. Hopefully it leads smoothly into the next thing and I can keep going. If not, I’m stopped again. I’m watching Captain America in very small pieces.

I think I’ve finally got all the shirts sorted and arranged. This is good, because tomorrow the next shipment of t-shirts arrives.