Work

Appearances and Interviews

By / July 22, 2010

As I’ve mentioned repeatedly in various ways, it is time for me to clear out and catch up on all the things that got neglected in the past two months. Among the neglected things are some announcements which may or may not interest you.

Dungeon Crawlers Radio Interview: At ConDuit in May, Revan and Malak approached me to request an interview. When I regretfully mentioned that Howard was at Balticon, they clarified that it was me they wanted to interview. So I got to spend 17 minutes talking about my own projects as well as the stuff that I do for Howard and our micro publishing company. I really enjoyed the interview. You can listen to it on the internet for free: Dungeon Crawlers Interview Sandra Tayler.

Writing Excuses Podcast: I think I mentioned it before, but there was a special episode of Writing Excuses where Dawn Wells, Kenny Pike, and I talk about what it is like to be married to a successful author/artist. Recording the podcast was great fun, hopefully it is also fun to listen to: Writing Excuses: Living With the Artist

Writing Excuses Signing at Dragons and Fairy Tales: On July 31st from 5-8 pm Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler will be gathering together to do a group signing. They will also be recording an episode or two in front of a live audience. You know you want to be part of that audience. (3535 E Ranches Parkway Suite A, Eagle Mountain, UT)

GenCon: So by now some of you may have figured out that we’ll be at GenCon. The XDM/Schlock Mercenary booth will be #1921. This puts us on a main aisle right across from the Wizards of the Coast booth. If you’re at the event, please be sure to stop by. Howard will be at the booth unless he is participating in programming. My booth time has yet to be determined since I will also be shepherding two teenage kids through the wonders of a huge gaming convention. If there is any space left in Tracy Hickman’s Killer Breakfast, you should sign up right now. I heard Howard and Tracy plotting over lunch and it is an event not to be missed.

Aussicon 4: I will not be going to Australia in September, but Howard will be. He’ll be running a booth in the dealer’s room and rumor has it that he’ll also be involved in programming. We’ll fill in details as we have them.

And that’s all I’ve got at the moment, which really is quite enough to be going forward with.

Escape velocity achieved

By / July 9, 2010

The morning began with a trip to Alphagraphics for the final test print on the QFT cover. This was followed by a trip to the storage unit to pick up the last boxes necessary for Monday’s shipping event. After that I emailed the last bits of paperwork to the kind folks who are handling the shipping of books to Australia. Janci arrived to work on postage printing, and I was done. I had accomplished every bit of work that it was possible for me to do before 8am Monday.

Normally this would be the signal for me to turn into a jellyfish and accomplish nothing for two days. Instead I switched gears and started field marshalling my children into packing suitcases. By noon we were in the car and on our way to a family reunion. Tomorrow and Sunday will be filled with bonding activities and laughter. It is a good thing. I am glad for it. I am also thinking longingly of hiding in a quiet corner as a jellyfish. Fortunately my extended family reads my blog and they have kindly not required me to plan anything. I’m just along for the ride, where ever it may go.

News of various kinds

By / July 8, 2010

So the news that I could not blog about last week is that my sister Nancy has been diagnosed with cancer. In the space between diagnosis and surgery she requested that I not say anything on the internet. Now she blogged the information herself. She seems very prepared to treat it all as an interesting experience. I look forward to reading her observations and hearing about both the good and the bad which will come from what lies ahead for her. Prognosis is good. It was caught early and the survival rate for this type of cancer is high. In addition, everyone feels strongly that she’s going to kick this in the teeth and be around for a long time to come.

Since I found out last week I’ve done lots of wrestling with my own thoughts. I want very much to be able to help, but the things I can do are severely limited by the fact that she is in Germany and I am in Utah. I am also very aware that while this blog is for me to discuss the things about my own life, her cancer is not about me. And it shouldn’t be. And yet it very definitely affects me. It’s like one of those slow-motion bullet strikes seen on Youtube or Mythbusters. Shock waves ripple far from the point of strike. I’m not in the middle. I’m out on one of those waves, moved and affected, but not directly damaged.

I had my turn in the middle with my tumor and radiation therapy (not cancerous) a decade ago. Those experiences may prove useful in understanding what lies ahead for my sister. Alternately, those experiences may lead me astray and merely make me more grieved than I need to be. I really can’t tell. It also sets me an interesting problem. In the middle of my radiation I found it very hard to communicate with many people because I did not have the energy to watch them grieve for me. Their grief, and desire to do something to help, was a huge elephant in the room that we could not talk around and no one had the courage to call out. So in the next few months during Nancy’s chemotherapy I shall have to do a careful dance to try to make sure that my necessary emotional processes do not cause her further fatigue during a time when energy will be in short supply.

In other news, I spent the morning in a nearly blind panic trying to simultaneously assemble a pallet to ship to Australia, stack everything we will need for the shipping day in a place where we can easily find it, and finish the last layout corrections on QFT. Fortunately Howard and Janci were here to pick me up when I collapsed into a quivering pile of overstressedness. The pallet is now on the way to Australia. The supplies are neatly stacked. Layout is not completely done, but I pick up what is hopefully the last test print at 8 am tomorrow morning.
Then I pack my kids into the car and head North for a family reunion, far away from my house and my work.

Perspectives on clutter

By / July 6, 2010

Our front room is like a little eddy in the flow of our lives. Things wash up here and remain until some effort is made to move them elsewhere. I know the traditional use for a front room is a place that is always clean to welcome guests. I like that idea, but I’m not good at putting it into practice. More often our front room gets used as a staging area for any large project which includes things exiting or entering the house. Which is most of them these days. Right now my front room contains:

The tent Link took to scout camp which needs to be set up, washed, and stowed properly lest it mildew.

The roll of banners which I need to mail to Indiana so that they can adorn the booth at GenCon.

The box of legal sized printer paper that I bought so I could make sketch sheets. I made the sheets, but the remainder of the box still sits where I dropped it two weeks ago because I haven’t yet mustered the mental energy to find a place for it to belong and to carry it there.

A half empty bag of 360 plastic cups. It was given to me along with the keys when the former church activity chair handed over everything relevant to the assignment. The cups are destined to be stowed in a cupboard over at the church building, but I haven’t had time to do that yet.

Backpacks and winter gear which have spilled out of the coat closet. Everything got jumbled in there during the last month of school. Now they need to be sorted and stowed properly.

A set of playing cards scattered. Not sure why they’re here.

Two baskets, a woven stool, and a wooden box. They are evidence of merit badges that Link earned while at camp. Also evidence of camp are the two pairs of extremely dirty tennis shoes and the scattered particles of dirt and tree.

5 plants which have not been watered often enough, two of which I was supposed to plant outside as soon as I was sure a freeze would not kill them.

A plastic bin full of Little People toys that I brought into the front room to entertain the child of a friend while we visited. The visit was a month ago.

Random books and papers perched on various flat surfaces. Scattered toys and art projects. Lots of shoes kicked into one corner.

Oddly this list does not depress me. Today I am not looking at these things as clutter that I failed to clean up, but as evidence of important tasks either in process or completed. I’d better hurry and put it all away while the mood holds, because on a harder day they’ll feel like evidence of failure.

At the end of an insane week

By / July 3, 2010

I’ve spent today stumbling around, trying to get things done, but never really developing focus. If I didn’t still have so many things to accomplish, I would have spent the day reading or watching a show. I think I have entirely depleted my well of organizational energy. At the moment I don’t want to be in charge of anything.

I am now the owner of an iPhone. This is the result of Howard and I needing to use the devices as credit card terminals for GenCon. Having two will be a great benefit. It will also allow for some other useful business interactions, as well as some personal ones. In theory I will be able to finally dispense with my paper planner and instead track my schedule electronically. But I’m not going to switch scheduling systems until after life has slowed down a bit.

I’ve finally got all the interior pieces I need for QFT. All that remains is the cover and some editing. Then I can move on to test prints. Most of the stress has left the project, what remains is just work.

My impossible to do list has shrunk and is now looking possible. I don’t know how that happened, but I’ll take it.

Stopping in the garage on a summer evening

By / June 29, 2010

Today I was not quite as busy, nor quite as effective as yesterday. This is to be expected. High efficiency days are usually followed by a crash. I did not crash, but I am oh-so-tired. Tonight I need to get to bed before 3 am.

QFT is almost complete. This is good. It took over all of my work hours today. Tomorrow I need to re-focus on convention prep. Thursday has family stuff. Friday is RMS shipping day prep. I have it all lined up neatly. I’m sure it will be rearranged as soon as I get moving. Three more weeks and the vast majority of the work will be complete.

I keep thinking about the Robert Frost poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” I’ve heard it argued that the poem is about suicide, but I don’t think so. I think it is just about being really, really tired and longing for rest.

“But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.”

I’ve felt exactly that lately. I am exhausted, but the desire to fulfill my commitments keeps me going even when I want to stop. I don’t have woods nearby, but every time I step into my garage I want to stay there. It is quiet and full of the smell of new books. It is filled with evidence of tasks completed. Right now my house is full of things to do.

I’m not worried over the long term. I can see the end of this crazy busy time. Calmer days lay on the other side. But the thought of all the things yet to do makes me want to cry. The only way out is through. So I’ll go to bed, and get up in the morning, and get back to work.

Things I have done today

By / June 29, 2010

Packed my oldest son off for a week at Scout Camp. This included last minute scrambling to find lost uniform bits and pancakes with smiley faces.

Breakfast and scripture reading. (Managed to not spill on the scriptures, which is a good thing.)

Howard and I had a quick discussion about some business propositions and what the responses should be to various requests made via email.

Answered a whole pile of email. How big is a pile? Well right now I only have 9 messages with stars next to them because they need my attention asap. First thing this morning there were three times that number, plus a dozen emails I hadn’t even read yet. And a dozen more in the “answer when convenient” category. I can vaguely remember when getting an email was an event instead of commonplace.

Did a quick scan of Livejournal, facebook, twitter, CNN, and my blog reading list.

Processed merchandise orders. Filed the ones which have to wait for shipping day (orders containing RMS). Packaged the ones that go into the mail today.

Arranged tickets for Howard to attend Worldcon in Australia during the first week of September.

Emailed Worldcon/Hugo folks to let them know that Howard will be there. Hopefully it will not be too late for him to get on some programming.

Fed pancakes to my other kids.

Quick meeting in the kitchen with Howard where we divide up the tasks for the day. Howard will be drawing pictures for QFT. My list is long, but the meeting helped me prioritize the critical stuff to the top.

Purchased Dealer room space at Worldcon in Australia. Also contacted the international freight broker to begin figuring out how I am going to ship merchandise to sell in Australia legally. We’ll also have to figure out how to file the necessary sales tax on things we sell. Also we need to predict how much we will sell so that Howard does not run out, but also does not have to haul stuff home. Eep. I’m going to ignore this task for the rest of today. It is full of daunting.

Contacted some business partners to discuss contractual issues.

Picked up four large banners from Alphagraphics. These will hang behind our table at GenCon. Howard looked them over and approved them (in yet another quick meeting), which was a huge relief to me. I handled contracting the images from Jim Zubkavich over at Udon and did all the approving. They are beautiful. We are happy.

Paid for the next three months on our two storage units. I may have to visit them again later today.

Bought basketry kits from the Scout office. My two youngest were jealous of the project that Link was working on in advance of Scout Camp. Now they get to make baskets too.

Did this week’s accounting work. It was pretty light, just receipts to enter and a single bill to pay. Next week the accounting will include quarterly reports on royalties and quarterly tax reports. Whee.

Wrote more emails.

Lunch (while listening to a teenage girl tell me why her life is overwhelming.)

Sorted t-shirts into three piles. One for shipping day at Dragon’s Keep. One for shipping to GenCon. One to stay here and fill orders as they come in. Created an inventory sheet for the shirts I am shipping to GenCon. I erred slightly on the more-than-I-think-will-actually-sell side. I hope my educated guesses about sales are better than the ones I did for Balticon. We could have sold twice as much there if we’d only sent it.

Ran out of steam. Wrote a blog entry and clicked stuff on the internet. It is now 2 pm. Next I intend to catch up on Doctor Who so that Kiki and Howard can talk about the finale without ruining it for me. After that I hope to get back to work putting together the freight shipment for GenCon. It needs to ship in the next couple of days. And of course I still have laundry, dishes, children, and QFT layout.

Edited to add:

Doctor Who was interrupted by basketry. The kids required more help than I expected. As in, I had to sit with them until the baskets were done 90 minutes later.

I went back to Doctor Who for a bit, but stopped to do dishes, cook dinner, and eat.

The evening was consumed by QFT instead of GenCon. And I mean completely consumed. I just finished the work and it is now 2 AM. QFT is looking better all the time, but it is still not done. Tomorrow Howard and I will sit down for a meeting to discuss the remaining white spaces.

The difference between impossible and possible

By / June 19, 2010

Last Tuesday my list of chores for the next 30 days looked impossible. One week in particular is over-full with major events. I’ll have a three day family reunion in another state shoehorned in between shipping prep and the shipping day. This will be followed by a week of swimming lessons, a writer’s retreat, and an important-to-the-kids church party. Surrounding that crazy week, I have to ship loads of merchandise to GenCon, make sure I have all the paperwork done for selling in another state, and possibly also do the same sorts of chores for selling in another country. I will have to learn things just in time to get them done. I sat at my kitchen table and wanted to cry about the impossible-ness of it all. Increasing my sadness was the knowledge that I’m actually excited by all the things I have to do. They’re all interesting challenges, but I don’t feel like I can do them justice because they’re all piled on top of each other. It feels like I just need to get them done rather that taking time to get them right.

That thought pattern came back to bite me on Thursday night. A project I hurried to get done was returned for corrections. More than that, it required expansion. My impossible list got a little more impossible. And I despaired. But I was on vacation and so I deliberately let it go. I knew I had to give the family time my full attention, because if I get that wrong I don’t get a do over.

This morning I was back at work, and what seemed impossible last week, now feels like something I can manage. Pieces came together, I cleared out my email box, tasks got done. I love it when I get things done and I know that they won’t come back to me. I still have a million things to do. But I’ll just keep going and somehow I think I’ll get it all done.

The Schlock Mercenary Anniversary Party

By / June 12, 2010 / 1 Comment

Being a blogger is a serious disadvantage for certain activities, such as planning a surprise party for your spouse. For the last week and a half my head has been full of stuff about which I could not blog. I’ve been chewing my nails looking at the weather, stressing over the fact that the party time was scheduled at the same hour as the book signings of some friends, and trying to guess whether everything would go well. It did.

Schlock Mercenary 10th Anniversary

Howard was pretty sure I had something up my sleeve for today’s 10th anniversary of Schlock Mercenary, but he did not expect a full party. I truly can not take credit for the event. My major contribution was to approve the good ideas of others and to help make sure that Howard arrived on schedule. The big banner and the birthday cake were both provided by Rodney.

Schlock's birthday cake

We even sang happy birthday to Schlock, but Howard was the one who blew out the candles.

Candle blowing

Most of the party attendees were locals, but those from afar were represented by Pi and Kreely who’ve been along for the ride since the beginning and traveled all the way from Washington state.
The plaque

Dave Brady created an amazing plaque built around a digital photo frame. It is full of pictures provided by far-flung friends and fans. He cast the metal for it himself.

Schlock bowl

The decorations were provided by my amazing sister-in-law Rebecca. She crafted the Schlock candy bowl out of insulation foam. I’m glad I took a picture when I did, because this guy spent most of the party looking forlornly into an empty bowl. The kids took off with his treats.

Place settings

She made some awesome table decorations too. But I think the coolest thing was the epaulets.

Epaulet photo
You can see them right above Howard’s shoulder. Most of the attendees were wearing them by the end of the party. I meant to acquire some, but I got distracted talking to people. By the end of the party, Howard’s epaulets found a new home anyway.

Antennae

It was rainy and cold when the party began, but people came anyway. It warmed our hearts that so many carved time out of their busy lives to celebrate with us, even outdoors in the rain. There were enough people that I did not have the chance to talk with everyone. By the end of the party the sun had come out and the world looked brighter. We shared potluck food and many lingered past the ending hour. It was an excellent event.

Schlock Mercenary is 10 Years old today

By / June 11, 2010

Ten years ago today the first Schlock Mercenary strip went up on the web. Howard had only been drawing for a couple of months. I still considered the whole project a nice hobby for him. I supported it, because I believe it is good for people to have hobbies, but I had not yet bought into the vision. I had no idea that this one little strip on the web was the beginning of so many dreams fulfilled. I had no idea of all the work ahead of us, or of the things I would need to become to help the project succeed.

A couple of years ago I had a conversation with a neighbor in which I talked about the things I was doing. She sighed and said “It must be nice to have time to chase a dream. With three little ones, I hardly know what mine are anymore.” I pondered that statement later and realized that not only was I living a life which allowed for chasing dreams, I was actively catching them and putting them into my pockets. This was made possible because of Schlock Mercenary. In fact, some of these dreams could not even have existed without Schlock Mercenary to stand on.

So today is a day for me to stand up and say thanks to Howard. His dream, his work, his diligence, all paved the way for me to become who I am and live the life that I have. I really love my life, even the parts that are hard. Howard helps me with the hard bits, but I owe him thanks for that every day not just once per decade.

It is also a day for me to thank all of the Schlock Mercenary fans out there everywhere. You came and you laughed. You wrote emails to us which helped us get through the emotional lows. You shared the comic with your friends and co-workers. You said nice things when the words of others stung. We could not be where we are without all of you. Without the fans, this comic would have withered and died long ago. So thank you. I hope you’ll stick with us for the next ten years.