Work

Shipping day 1

By / June 4, 2012

Postage printing, invoice sorting, Howard signing the covers of books, then packaging the orders which contained no sketched SEOS books. Everything went smoothly, except that we ran out of boxes. I thought my box shipment would arrive this afternoon, I’ll be here tomorrow instead. So the second half of unsketched orders will go out Wednesday.

Tomorrow morning Travis and Howard sign the covers of books while three of us unbox, stack, stamp, and rebox the books. Then all will be ready for sketching to begin. Howard focused his day today on making a week’s worth of comics. Progress was good.

I’m feeling much better about how things are working. Seeing the process in action helps me a lot.

My Life in Tweets

By / June 3, 2012 / 1 Comment

My brain and hours have been full. If I’m not actually doing a shipping preparation task, I’ve been planning or tracking some business related task. This next week is when It get to send out 1000 presents in the mail to all the nice Schlock fans who gave us money. It is important not to mess this up. It is also important to make sure that Howard doesn’t over tax himself and to make sure that the kids get some attention. There is no “done” this week. It is all in the middle. However there do come times when I stop. Then it is like that schwarma scene at the very end of the Avengers credits, the one that some people find mystifying. I get it though. I’ve been that tired. After high energy, fast-thinking, intense action, there comes a time where it is all you can do to sit and chew. The brain goes blank and minutes drift by without notice. When I am stopped, I have no energy for crafting words. This is why I’ve not blogged since the books arrived on Thursday. I may not blog again for a week. What I will attempt to do is post short updates, probably based on things I’ve said on Twitter. I can pause work long enough for tweet sized thoughts. This means that those of you who follow me on Twitter will be getting re-runs. Sorry about that. If I can muster the energy I’ll add commentary so it’ll be like DVD extras.

Thursday May 31:
Good morning Thursday. I hope you’re planning to bring me a large truck full of books. If not, then I’ll like Friday better.

Thursday, you are my favorite day this week. You brought me 5000 books.

“Better than pulling a dead mouse from behind the dishwasher” is my new measure for unpleasant jobs. In other news, guess what I did today. [Note: this mouse was the cause of the mystery smell I complained about earlier in the week]

Friday June 1:
The things on my to do list won’t stop arguing about what is most important. Sleep. Really. Sleep is most important at 1am.

Made my to do list yesterday, must now zombie walk my way through it because 4 hours is not enough sleep. Glad a smart person made my list.

I have written up The Plan for my next 14 days. It is a lovely plan, full of things. I expect the first plan revision to occur in 3…2…

This is a day for writing things down because my brain is made of forget.

Saturday June 2:
Next week I’ll be posting updates about shipping progress. Such as: “all Schlock sketched books in the mail” Follow @sandratayler now to play along.

Shipping update for Saturday: Sketch sheets printed. Invoices sorted. cover signing and shipping of unsketched books to commence on Monday.

Oh, that’s right. I need to assemble 4 panels for an art show so I can ship them to DeepSouthCon50 on Monday. How many hours left today?

Art show solved: put art into a box, sort it nicely on the other end, I’ll be there to hang it. No careful instructions needed. Yay.

End tweet list.

I should probably note that I am looking forward to this week. Shipping is the week when I can see that this crazy business model really works. It is the time when I work with my hands and we have money to pay the bills. It also presents fun organizational and logistical puzzles. My brain likes these sorts of puzzles. It is just kind of a lot all at once and I wind myself up with being afraid I’ll do it wrong. Even though I’ve done it all before. Even though I have amazing help lined up. There is still that voice in my head which reminds me that I am human and therefore likely to make mistakes. I think I’ll feel much more relaxed once I see the first pile of packages loaded into a mail truck.

Sharp End of the Stick Arrives

By / May 31, 2012 / 3 Comments

It is nice that I am sufficiently familiar with the printing and book delivery process that I don’t panic anymore. I remember spending an entire week eagerly anticipating the arrival of a truck full of books and fretting that somehow all the books would be broken or wrong. It was terrifying to be holding pre-order money and not have the merchandise in hand to send. It is still tense. I always feel something unclench inside me when I crack open the first box on the first pallet of books to see that all is as expected. Each shipment has had its own little adventures. Our first book, Under New Management, arrived a week late so we’d arranged a shipping party and had nothing to ship. Howard ended up renting a truck and driving to Salt Lake to fetch the books. I think it was Tub of Happiness that was delivered in several feet of snow. Teraport Wars was the book where the lift gate on the truck threatened to tip the pallets over as it creakily lowered them to the ground. Emperor Pius Dei gave us a brief fright because all the boxes were stamped with Emperor Plus Dei and we were suddenly terrified that all the books had been misprinted, even though we’d already seen advance copies. These stabs of terror are not rational and reason has trouble banishing them.

Today’s adventure was receiving an email from our printing company to congratulate us on receiving our books yesterday, which we hadn’t. I did not panic, because it is very common for there to be confusion and miscommunication about book delivery. Shipping over seas on a freighter is inexact. The time spent clearing customs varies. So until the books arrive in Salt Lake City, no one is able to give us an exact delivery day. Reason told me that our books had arrived in Salt Lake yesterday and that was what the email meant. But I couldn’t sit still, because What If… I called our printer to tell them that we did not have our books yet. She said she would call the shipping company right away. Then I proceeded to pace while trying to pretend I was not pacing. What if the books had been accidentally delivered to someone else? What if there were no books?

Fortunately about fifteen minutes into my pacing I wandered past the front window and saw a truck in our cul de sac. He had four pallets of books for me.

It turns out that he’d attempted to deliver yesterday, but someone with a forklift had stacked the pallets on top of each other and they were too heavy to move that way. So he’d hauled the pallets back to Salt Lake to have them unstacked. An automatic system notified our printer of the first delivery and confusion was explained. This is our 13th time receiving shipments of books. There is always something unexpected.

Now I can begin to nail down the shipping schedule in earnest.

Pre-Orders, Shipping, and Travel

By / May 26, 2012


Pre-orders for Sharp End of the Stick close in just five days. That is also when we’re expecting a truck to show up with four pallets of books. The arrival of those books will usher in the next stage of book shipping work. Howard and Travis will spend a day signing covers while the kids and I stamp the sketch editions. Howard will begin sketching and I will begin shipping. This time we’re changing our shipping process. Instead of having a single big shipping day, we’re going to have many smaller shipping days. It will spread out the work and thus lower the pressure, rather like spreading out weight over a larger surface prevents breakage. It is possible that we’ll hate this new shipping method, but we’re committed to trying it this time. I’ve got two teenagers to help me in addition to my regular shipping second in command. I think that the end result will be all the books shipped by June 12th. Which is pretty important because on June 14th Howard and I depart for DeepSouthCon in Huntsville Alabama. If you’re in that area, hope you stop by.

For this Memorial day weekend, I plan to catch up on sleep and watch entirely too much Sherlock.

Preparation and Follow Up

By / May 10, 2012 / 1 Comment

In the category of preparation:
Preorders for Sharp End of the Stick open on Monday. Before that can happen I have work to do. I spent a portion of today setting up our online store. I also need to set up some rules and logistics so that we can run a social media contest. At least three lucky Schlock fans will be able to get copies of SEOS a month before anyone else. These advance copies ought to go somewhere that they’ll be loved.

The other thing that is happening next week is my departure for Nebula weekend. I’ve got some sewing to do in advance. Howard needs some alterations for his steampunk costume. He departs for World Steam Expo only a few days after I get back from Nebula Weekend. I do not want to count on having brain cells available for sewing in those three days, so it needs to be done now. I’ve also got a couple of things I want to alter before taking them with me to Nebula Weekend.

In the category of follow up:
I went to a writer’s conference last weekend. While there, I met several lovely agents and editors. I need to package up some queries and send them off to these lovely people. My book has zero chance of selling if I never send it anywhere. I’ve also made some notes about things to update on my website. Even more importantly, I released Cobble Stones in a manner that was more like sliding it under the door than giving it a fanfare. I should do an actual marketing push for the book, which means contacting some of the nice book bloggers I met at the writer’s conference. Also, I should write new things.

My office is 85% complete (the remaining 15% is organization and shelving), but our family room is still a jumbled mess. It contains furniture and things which I evicted from my office for construction and have decided will not be going back. Some of it needs to be hauled to a thrift store the rest needs to be sorted and given new homes somewhere else in the house. Hopefully I’ll be able to vacuum the family room sometime before Sunday.

We’re three weeks out from the end of school. There are all sorts of trailing educational ends which need to be tied up before the school doors close for the summer. Kiki has to finish her AP art portfolio. Link needs to bring up his grades. Gleek and Patch have projects and performances nearing completion. My brain tracks all of this, even the things that the kids ought to be tracking for themselves.

By this time next week I hope to have it all done.

Cobble Stones, Storymakers Conference, and a Book Signing in Washington D.C.

By / April 30, 2012

One of my March projects was pulling together a sampler book of blog entries. I’ve now got my advance copies and can be reasonably confident that what I’ve got is ready to sell.

If you want to pre-order your copy of Cobble Stones, just click through to our store. I’m taking pre-orders. The books will ship by May 30. I’ll also have the book available in electronic formats, hopefully in a week or two, but that is one of the tasks which fell by the wayside during my office remodel and surprise trip to see Grandma in the hospital.

My advance copies are slated to be on sale at LDS Storymakers this Friday and Saturday. You’ll find them in the conference store sitting right next to Hold on to Your Horses and a pile of Schlock Mercenary books. Even if you’re not registered for the conference, please feel free to drop by for the mass signing from 5-6:30 pm on Friday May 4, in the Provo Marriott hotel (101 West 100 North, Provo) I expect the signing to be chaotic, but it will be packed with interesting authors whose books are worth reading. Howard and I will both be there.

In two weeks Cobble Stones and I will go on the road. We’ll be attending the Nebula Weekend in Washington D.C. and participating in a mass signing there as well. Friday, May 18, 2012 from 5:30 p.m. until 7:30 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City (located at 2799 Jefferson Davis Highway (Route 1), Arlington, Virginia). This signing will be full of authors such as Connie Willis and Joe Haldeman, well worth your time to stop by. I expect to spend most of my time people watching the fans standing in line for other people. Though I’ll have my sister Nancy Fulda for company. I will have copies of Cobble Stones and Hold on to Your Horses available for sale.

Make your plans and come say hello.

I Keep My Brain in My Office

By / April 28, 2012 / 3 Comments

I am very tired today and I have learned an important thing about myself; I store parts of my brain function in the organizational structure of my house. Once I got the correct desk installed in my office and set up my computer on it, much of my inability to prioritize vanished. This effect increased as I moved my books and projects into their new places in my office. I depend upon visual reminders to help me keep track of what I need to do during the day. I post school notes on the kitchen bulletin board and on my fridge. My old computer hutch was papered with post-it notes. A business card sitting at the foot of my monitor would remind me of an email to send. With all of that stuff packed away in boxes I carried a level of stress and internal confusion. My written to do list has all of those reminders as well, but apparently my back brain requires spacial orientation to the tasks. It is fascinating. I may get more analytical about why this works for me at some other time. For now I am very tired.

In the last two weeks I’ve been to IKEA four times (Howard once), Home Depot six times, Lowe’s twice, and I think there was a Walmart run in there as well. Each time I was making expensive purchasing decisions or returning the results of last trip’s bad decisions. I helped three kids keep track of their work so they could get it done. I kept in touch with my parents (Grandma is better, moved back into the physical rehabilitation facility). The prom dress was altered, not perfectly, but well enough. Kiki was sent off smiling to prom. Gleek is into the middle of her time swap. All of this week’s critical tasks are done all of it despite multiple nights of insomnia followed by mornings where I had to get up early. Next week has a new list of critical tasks, I am not going to think about them tonight. Instead I’m going to show you pictures of my remodeled office, because it is pretty. …

I Keep My Brain in My OfficeRead More »

The Thoughts I Think at 3:30 A.M. When I am not Asleep

By / April 26, 2012 / 3 Comments

It is 3:30 a.m. and I lie in bed worrying that I bought the wrong table at IKEA. It is an irrational worry. I know this, but in the drifting space between waking and sleeping logic is disconnected. I got a table to be my new work desk, but when I got it here I realized it was not the right shape. This is obviously the first minor collapse in my decision making skills which will make everything fall apart. Last night I had similar emotions about the light fixture I chose, which Howard assures me is fine. In this case the desk will have to be returned. It is a minor setback in a project that is mostly going well. Except that it delays the time when I’m settled back in my office instead of cramped up at an awkward desk in Howard’s office. Half awake it seems like I’ll never be able to get any focused work done again.

I wanted to start this next paragraph by saying “the real problem, of course is…” Only I can’t. The trouble is multitudinous. The construction work on my office is done, the moving in is yet to be accomplished. If I could get that done, it would greatly help to settle my mind. Only I’ve got orders waiting for me to ship. I should do those first. And the accounting. I haven’t sat down with the finances since before I took my office apart. Since that date I have spent thousands of dollars on remodeling costs, a trip to California to see my sick Grandma, and some new furniture for the new space. In theory I’ve budgeted and mental math says I’m still inside budget, but I don’t quite trust my mental math or decision making skills right now. So, I ought to do accounting and settle my mind. But Kiki got a last minute invitation to Prom. It is on Saturday. I have to make several minor alterations on her dress. It is a fairly small task except that my sewing things are in the big stack of things which used to be in my office. I’ll have to dig them out. The dress has to be done. I should do that first. Except tomorrow I have a meeting scheduled with Link’s teacher. It turns out that he has not been doing his homework or school work of late. There is a pile of things for him to catch up on. I need to conference with the teacher to figure out how best to help him accomplish this. We also need an ongoing plan because he shut down after feeling overwhelmed. Link has earned a spot center stage in the “focused parenting” category. It is nothing that can’t be handled. I can do it easily when I’m on top of my game. Which I’m not, as evidenced by my horrible poor decision making regarding the selection of an office table. Tomorrow also has to feature the construction of a milk carton catapult so that Patch can give a presentation on catapults to his class. I need to buy Marshmallows for that. Only the van is almost out of gas, so I need to buy gas before I drive anywhere. While I’m buying gas I need to get gas for the lawnmower. The lawn is nearly to the point where it can be measured in feet. So I should make the kids do their lawn mowing. I should also call my Mom, because the last update on Grandma was two days ago and she was weaker then. I should be doing more to support Mom and Dad. I should at least be keeping up with how things are going there. Except that I keep burying that thought, or getting distracted, because it hurts. So many things hurt and I’ve got no time to break down and cry until at least Saturday. Tomorrow Gleek begins a time swap activity in which she spends a week living as her Grandma did in 5th grade. This means altering our family patterns to accommodate the fact that she’ll not be using any electronic entertainment, we get bonus points if she makes it all week without using a microwave or driving faster that 50 miles per hour. I love the idea of this assignment. I want to do it right, make it a positive experience. But we’ve got to get it done early because next weekend I have a conference and the kids will be babysitting each other while Howard and I are presenting. This will work best if they can watch movies while we’re gone. So time swap has to start late tomorrow night. I still need to work on two presentations for the conference. I have notes. It shouldn’t be too hard, but it isn’t done yet. Perhaps I should get that done first thing tomorrow so that I don’t have to worry about it anymore. After the conference we’ve got company coming. At least I’ll have a sofa bed for them to sleep on. It’ll be delivered tomorrow evening and will be placed into my newly remodeled office. Hopefully it will be delivered before writer’s group, but likely in the middle of it. I need to do the reading for writer’s group. I should do that first thing tomorrow so that it is done. I really hope that the sofa is delivered and is exactly right. After the table debacle I’m afraid that I chose wrong for that too. Then there are the advance copies of Sharp End of the Stick that arrived today. I should be focused on setting up for pre-orders. I should be testing our fulfillment system and learning how it works with the new software I installed last week. But doing that work is really hard when I’m intruding in Howard’s space. He really needs me out of his office. He hasn’t been able to get his work done this week either, not the way he needs to. So I really should focus on getting my office arranged and set up. If only I had my office put back together, maybe I could prioritize everything else. Except, it really is the wrong table. I need to take it apart and return it to the store. I’ve spent so much money lately and I can’t stand the thought of spending more on a table I’ll regret for years. I just need to go get a different table…

Thus my thoughts circle themselves, sometimes drifting to sleep, sometimes snapping awake. There are too many things in my head. Time to eat food since I’m not sure if I really ate dinner. Then perhaps typing over a thousand words about all the dumb stuff in my head will help it clear so that I can sleep. If I fall asleep right now, I could sleep for two hours before I need to get up and start doing all my things.

Working in Exile

By / April 16, 2012

I did not expect how neurotic I would get when my office was disassembled. I still had work to do, but most of my tools were in boxes. It made me randomly cranky, which the kids did not appreciate. Fortunately Howard donated his drawing table as a makeshift computer desk. For the next week we’ll be sharing an office. It has been eight years since we last shared an office. We’re pretty good at sharing things after 19 years of shared life, shared house, shared children. Yet I miss having my own space. In a week my space will be nicer than it has ever been. Then I’ll be ready to arrange it so that I can share it with guests, Kiki’s art projects, craft space, etc. For now, I need to figure out how to get my work done when my workspace is new and distracting. Also I need to stop being distracted by the possibilities of wood trim and paint.

The Next Seven Weeks

By / April 9, 2012 / 1 Comment

In the next seven weeks we have:
re-building the shipping system
all the end-of-school activities of which I’ve not yet been notified
advance copies of Sharp End of the Stick (SEOS)
a school art gala
opening pre-orders for SEOS
Kiki’s AP art portfolio
receiving the SEOS shipment
teaching at LDS Storymakers conference
sending me to the Nebula weekend in DC
a time-swap week during which Gleek will pretend to be living in a pre-computer era
sending Howard to World Steam Expo in Ann Arbor
a dance festival
a week long visit from my mom
office remodeling
unspecified child crises which will pop up randomly and inconveniently
field day
preparations for Deep South Con in June

All of those things are important, as are preparations for GenCon and WorldCon. But this week contains the most important event of the entire year. This is when Howard and I gather the kids and flee our work to go do nothing in particular in southern Utah. The only agenda is to be together. Hopefully fun will be had, but even if crankiness is had, that is fine. Uninterrupted time together is the point.

As for the other stuff, I’m not particularly stressed about it all. I can see where everything fits. It is going to be busy, but not crazy. I hope.