Work

Life the Universe and Everything Symposium at BYU

By / January 23, 2010

The Life the Universe and Everything The Doc Smith Science Fiction and Fantasy Symposium is an annual event held on BYU campus in Provo UT. This year it will be held Feb 11-13. It is Free to attend. I highly recommend it to anyone who lives nearby and has an interest in genre fiction. I know most of the people who will be presenting and they are all highly skilled professionals who are happy to share what they’ve learned.

Howard and I will both be there for most of the symposium. Howard is on 9 panels, so there will be plenty of opportunities to hear him speak. You can check the schedule online for details. I wasn’t put on any panels this year, but I’ll still be around talking to people. I can’t stay away from such a large gathering of people with whom I love to hang out. Howard may drag me up to participate in the Making a Living as an Artist panel at 5 PM on Saturday, but that panel is already heavy with qualified people, so time will tell. I should note that most of the panel topics tend to serve as jumping off points for fascinating and nuance conversations about various subjects.

Come by and say hello.

Getting ready to print

By / January 22, 2010

Our printer called us this afternoon. They were worried about us because it has been over six months since we printed books with them. The call was to see if they could win back our business. We assured them that we are completely pleased with their services and that we intend to be printing again come the end of February. I shot off a formal request for a bid via email once the call was over. And so the process of printing Resident Mad Scientist begins.

We seem to be chronically behind our intended releases for books. In theory we’re releasing 2-3 books per year. We’ve never yet managed three. Tub of Happiness was solo for it’s year because I had to learn how to do layout to put together the book that followed it. That took time. Teraport Wars shared a release year with Hold on to your Horses, but then Howard had to re-color before he could release Scrapyard. Last year we did put out two books, but one of them was XDM, not a Schlock book.

I feel like finally we have a system down that will work. Finally we have Travis doing the re-coloring so that Howard can focus on bonus materials and cover art. I have high hopes that we can finally maintain that 2-3 Schlock books per year which will allow books in print to catch up with the online archive. This is the brass ring we’ve had our eye on ever since we first printed a book. Every year I do some math and think that we could achieve it in two years if we really work hard. Then we work really hard, but the goal is still about two years away. Life kept throwing us unexpected obstacles and opportunities. Our plans shifted. Looking back, I can see that we’ve walked the right path. We’ve made the right choices. There is nothing to regret. But I still want to grab hold of that brass ring.

I opened up the InDesign file for Resident Mad Scientist which has lain idle for nearly two months. There was no need for me to spend time on it while we were waiting on Travis for the coloring. My attention was needed elsewhere. But the time has come. I need to pour creative energy into this project. I need to find the right margin art. I need to construct footnote boxes. I need to organize and copy edit. It feels good to be picking up these skills again. They are familiar now instead of stressful. I’m looking forward to getting Resident Mad Scientist done.

And in my spare time, I solve mysteries

By / January 15, 2010

I am a writer, but I am not a writer first. My life is full of things which are not writing. Many of those things are more important or more urgent than writing. I know a lot of other writers and this is true for most of them. Life gets in the way of writing, but we put up with it because all that interference give us experiences to write about. Or at least in theory. A lot of my personal interference has to do with dishes, laundry, and carpooling, not really the stuff from which gripping drama can be crafted.

I am constantly amused by the portrayals of writers in written and televised fiction. They spend very little time actually writing. Instead they’re off having adventures, or relationships, or solving mysteries. (Some examples: Murder She Wrote, Castle, As Good as it Gets, Bones, Romancing the Stone.) This is because watching some one write is boring. Often being the person doing the writing is tedious. Even when doing the writing is thrilling and invigorating, all the excitement is internal. From the outside it just looks like a person typing, and maybe smiling, occasionally cackling with glee. It looks a little disturbed, but not fascinating viewing for extended periods of time.

So what does a writer’s life really look like? The answers are as varied as the writers themselves. I know writers who are students, government employees, stay-at-home parents, business owners, teachers, and just about any other life role you can think of. Some of the writers I know are full-time, writing is their primary job. But even these writers have lives that are full of other things. To be a full time writer is to own a small business and there are piles of administrative tasks involved. All of these other life roles reduce the amount of time a person can spend in the writer role.

In the past 3 months I’ve finally found writing time in chunks rather than snippets. It is luxurious to be able to spend two hours writing on a single day. Most often I get 3 or 4 fifteen minute spans of time during which I scribble notes or compose sentences. I use the time spent carpooling, dish doing, laundry sorting, to think thoughts so I can scribble them down when the opportune moment arrives. But some days there is no time for thinking or writing at all. This is why writer/mystery shows are complete fantasy. I don’t know any professional writers who have time to spare for wandering around finding clues.

That anxious voice inside my head

By / January 5, 2010

An argument with a voice in my head after spending several hours working on book layout:

Time for a break.

But we’ve still got so much left to do. You’re on a roll. Why stop now?

I’m tired. I’m cold. My hands are feeling shaky. And all those rows of file names are starting to get tangled up in my head.


But this is important. It has to be done. The sooner it is done the sooner you can move on to the other stuff.

Yes. But it does not have to be completed today. I’m going to go take a bath.

The voice is quiet while I get up from the computer, have a bath, and then lay down to rest. Then it is back.

You have to pick up kids in an hour. What if you don’t wake up in time. You really should go back downstairs and get some more work done while they’re out of the house. Once they’re home you won’t be able to focus on work.

I have a timer set. It will beep and wake me up. All that other stuff is true, but the work can wait. The work is supposed to wait. I’m supposed to pay attention to the kids in the afternoon.

I then went to sleep, but the voice romped through my dreams making them feel restless. It plotted sneaking off to do work after picking up the kids, then it put that into my dreams. Defiantly, I kept sleeping until I heard the timer.

I really do have a lot to accomplish this month. All the things are important and I will feel much more relaxed when they are done. But pushing too hard and stressing myself only gets them done a little bit faster and it seriously impacts my enjoyment of life. I don’t need to run around in an anxiety driven panic. I just need to do some work every day until all the things are done.

The Writing on the Calendar on the Wall

By / December 29, 2009

My calendar is three feet by four feet and it hangs on the kitchen wall. All of the months are laid out in a grid; each with its own square foot of space. This is where I write the family schedule in multi-colored inks, one color per person. I spend a lot of time standing in front of the calendar. It allows me to quickly review a week, or a month, or a year, as I’m planning ahead to see what will fit, and what will not fit, into our lives. Each day gets about a square inch of space. It is common for the entire inch to be filled with a rainbow of notations about what is to happen that day.

Today I ventured out into the snow covered wilds to fetch the calendar for next year. Upon my return, I sat down with the pens and noted all the scheduled events of which I am currently aware. It used to be that a new calendar stayed mostly empty, only filling up as each month drew near. It was like a wave of scheduled events which rolled across the blank squares. It doesn’t work that way anymore. The wave is still there, but the empty is not. I have events scheduled through November of next year. Our path for the next year is set, complete with wayposts and planned respites. All of it is waiting for the wave of little events to roll through and fill up the gaps.

From now until that mythical day when we’re not so busy, I will be working rear guard action. I must defend the white spaces on the calendar. Because those blank days are not empty days. They are days which are full of the mundane things which don’t get written on calendars. I have to leave time for us to do laundry, and read stories, and clean house, and go to the park, and sit still. There has to be time for the boring stuff, which is the important stuff that we remember best.

I will not always be able to keep spaces empty. I can already see a couple of months that are going to be insanely busy. That happens. That is why it is all the more important to defend the spaces that I can defend. Defending the spaces means not volunteering for things even though I have the skills to get them done. It means telling people no. It means setting aside some of my shiny ideas indefinitely. It means making choices about the activities in which we choose to participate. Turning down an obviously good thing so that I can keep a day empty feels backward, but I have to do it.

My new calendar is on the wall now. In two more days it will be this year’s calendar and the adventure will begin.

Managing an irregular income

By / December 21, 2009

Our income does not arrive in regular checks made out to the same amount. The bulk of what we make in a year will arrive in the month surrounding a book release. All the money arrives and sits in a big pile in our bank account. It is our reserve and for awhile we feel rich. But then the months pass by and the reserve dwindles. We still have bills to pay and we tighten our belts until the next book release.

One of the things I do to manage the money is keep separate accounts for the family and the business. The reserve sits in the business accounts and gets transferred to the family by means of small regular paychecks. This allows me to manage the family budget the same way I did when Howard still worked for a big corporation. At least in theory. The actuality is that when the business accounts begin to run low, we go longer between paychecks and the paychecks get smaller. Sometimes we even pull money from our home equity to cover bills for the last month or two prior to a book launch. That money gets paid back as soon as the next book launches.

We are currently at the lean end of our income cycle. Last year we launched a single Schlock book and then invested money into inventory in the form of XDM books, a reprint of Under New Management, and slipcases to make boxed sets. The inventory investment was necessary, but it diminished our reserve more quickly than usual. Since last August we’ve been about two months from having to borrow money to pay bills.

I did the accounting this morning and we are still about two months from having to borrow money to pay bills. This is largely due to additional advertising revenue. However all the scrambling we did during the Fall definitely helped. It also helps that Schlock fans were generous and bought the things we scrambled to make. Christmas sales went well.

Now Christmas sales are largely finished and advertising revenue always takes a nose dive in January. However, the end is in sight. Travis is hammering away at the coloring for the next book. Howard is hammering away at the bonus story. We should be able to send the book to the printer right about the time our reserves run out and we start to borrow. The borrowing makes us nervous, but the truth is that our home equity and our IRA accounts represent an enormous reserve in themselves. We stock them up when the money flows freely so that we can draw on them when things are tighter. If we are depleting a couple months of the year and accumulating the rest, then we’re still in good shape.

We really are very fortunate to get to do what we are doing.

Projects in my head

By / December 16, 2009

Christmas–still needs some organizing and shopping and wrapping and shipping.

The Kids– The level of drama around here is lower than it was, but there is still plenty for me to figure out and manage. I’ve figured out the family structures to meet the needs, but I have to keep it all in place.

One Cobble– My brain is almost constantly collecting stuff for blog entries, or composing experiences into stories. Sometimes I can write as soon as I think of it. Other times I have to scribble notes to try to save it for later.

House cleaning — always. This project I often try to ignore out of existence, but it never works.

Family Photo book– This was shoved to the back burner when I realized I couldn’t get it done in time for Christmas. Instead I planned to have it done by my Grandmother’s birthday. Which is at the end of January. And I’ve done nothing on the project for nigh three weeks now.

Resident Mad Scientist book layout– The deadline on this has been pushed back, but that does not mean I can ignore it. We need to know where margin art is necessary.

My essay book– I’ve collected and revised about a third of the essays I estimate I’ll need. I have notes for a bunch more. I really want to get to the point where I can be sending out queries.

Cooking– I’ve recently discovered an interest in occasionally cooking things where I don’t start with a box or a can.

Birthday story– By the end of January I either need to write or revise a short story for posting on my birthday. I like the tradition and I want to keep it.

Short stories– My back brain has decided that writing Christmas stories would be really cool. This comes despite the fact that it is notoriously difficult to write a Christmas story without doing a re-write of The Grinch, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, Fill-in-the-blank saves Santa Claus, or It’s a Wonderful Life. I don’t even have characters or plots in mind. I’m waiting patiently on this one and hoping that the mood subsides, because I honestly don’t have time at the moment.

The Reason to Save

By / December 10, 2009

I once heard a radio program which was lamenting the negative savings rate in America. The guest was an author of a book about saving for retirement and naturally had lots of opinions on the subject. She gave tips from her book, telling listeners how to improve their financial situation and save money. Among the tips were:
Setting up an automatic debit from paycheck into savings account.
Only having one credit card.
Using cash to purchase whenever possible.
Impose a waiting period on purchases to avoid impulse spending.
Doing the math on a purchase to figure out the final price with interest.

All of the tips are good, but I’ve heard them all before in many different iterations. The media is full of similar tips and exhortations for people to save money. What none of these reports or books make clear is why people should save money. Well okay, they say “for retirement,” but retirement is only a concept. Without a concrete plan it is hard to feel that saving for it is important. Saving for retirement is much easier when you know what it looks like.

So ask yourself, what is your dream? If your dream is to own a farm in the countryside, figure out how much it will cost to buy and to run. Then save money hand-over-fist to make it happen. Set a goal that by age 60 you’ll be able to afford that farm and have enough money to keep it running for the rest of your life. If your dream is to take trip around the world, do some research. Figure how much it will cost and set a goal for when you’ll have that money saved. If your dream is to never having to work again, figure out how much money you need to have saved so that you can live on the interest. If you dream of making pottery and selling it, find out how much money you need to have saved so that you can live on it for two years while your pottery business gets off the ground. If you dream of owning a fancy car, research how much it will cost to buy it and maintain it, then save for that.

The key here is to plan ahead. When Howard and I got married we had several goals. We wanted Howard to be able to earn his living creatively. We wanted to own a house. We wanted to have several children. All of our spending was structured to accommodate those long-term goals. When Howard got a pay raise, we didn’t raise our standard of living much. We saved the extra against a planned goal. Even when we had the house and the kids, we still spent carefully because we had the dream of Howard being able to make a living as a cartoonist. We did spend some money on luxuries like nice furniture and new cars, but each of these purchases was balanced against the larger goal. Each time we carefully considered whether the expense added more value to our lives than having Howard work from home would. Eventually we reached the day when Howard quit Novell. That was scary and I confess I did some second guessing about some of the things on which we’d chosen to spend money. Particularly during the first 15 months when we supported ourselves on a few corporate cartooning contracts and our savings. We made it through thanks to the previous planning and saving.

Now we have reached the point where all our just-got-married dreams have come to pass. We have a house, four kids, and our income is from a comic strip which Howard draws and I make into books. We have not stopped saving. At the moment our monetary focus is on paying down debt and creating a financial buffer. We like our life style and want to be sure that we get to keep it. This is particularly important because we know that our current good health will not last forever. Beyond that, we have new dreams. We want to help pay the way for four kids to attend college. We want to travel interesting places. We want to remodel the house. We want to be able to employ others so that they can reach their dreams. We use these new long-term goals as guideposts to decide how to spend the money we have in our pockets today.

What we don’t do much of is stash money away for retirement. We don’t really plan to retire. We like to work and we plan to work as long as we are able. Instead we are constantly updating our financial plans to match our long-term goals. Frequently this means that we put off buying things that we want, but don’t particularly need. This process is much easier because I am able to picture what that money will be used for instead. This is why we save.

Edited to add: A couple of people have made excellent points about the need for saving against emergencies and the value of sheltering money from taxes via IRA accounts. Both of these have merit and really ought to be considered when making a long term financial plan. And we do think about them at our house, but somehow they slipped my mind while writing this post. I guess I was trying to introduce the concept of making saving specific and directed to those who don’t think much about savings. However I now see that this entry is an incomplete picture.

Hamburgers with Howard

By / December 2, 2009

Howard came home from the grocery store with a pile of fixings. He was in the mood for a really good hamburger. I was drawn into the kitchen to keep him company while he cooked. The shipping could wait for an hour and the kids were all at school. This was a chance for Howard and I to visit. Also, the hamburgers needed two sets of hands. I cleared the counter while Howard prepped the grill and cooking surfaces. As I worked and talked with Howard I was reminded of another occasion when we cooked hamburgers together. It was the week he quit Novell.

Howard had spent the preceding month on a whirlwind set of business trips. He’d come home exhausted and with the knowledge that it was time for him to be done working in that corporate environment. I knew it was past time. I’d watched him stretch himself thinner and thinner trying to keep his product going by sheer force of will. The company kept asking him to accomplish more while simultaneously removing resources. It was killing him and I could see it. I was so glad when he prayed and realized it was time for him to leave. I’d been praying for years that the time would come.

Howard announced his intention to leave and it was astonishing how quickly it came to pass. Within two days everything was tied up and he was done. He had a hard time saying goodbye to his work friends. He had an even harder time packing up his office. Eleven years of commitment and emotional effort had gone into Novell. Howard was besieged by doubts and fears. I was not. I kept calmly assuring him that everything would be okay; that the decision was the right one. He came home on that last day and it was as if a weight had lifted from his shoulders. He was happy, but wrung out.

Then next day was when I felt fear. I was suddenly very aware of the bills I would have to pay and the complete lack of income to pay them. There is no severance for people who leave of their own volition. We had savings. It would last us about three months. I remember laying on the couch and feeling the house all around me as if it was a physical weight that I somehow had to carry. I was so scared. It was scary to sit down with the kids and explain to them how our income had changed and what that meant for them. I cried with them that we could no longer afford chicken nuggets. That day it was Howard’s turn to reassure me that everything would be okay.

On the third day Howard made hamburgers. We sat down at the table together. We sat there together at lunch and for the first time I felt joy in the decision to quit. It was a peaceful moment, a promise that the new life we were embarking upon would be better that the one we had just let go.

I thought of that five-years-ago lunch as I ate today’s hamburger. Howard and I sat together at the table and laughed over small things, taking time to enjoy a moment of peace before we both head back to work. The time since that long ago lunch has not been stress-free. There have been tears and terrors aplenty. But I was right. This life has been better. We have been happier, even during the times when we have to scramble to keep all the ends together.

And the burgers are really good.

Assembling Schlock boxed sets

By / July 8, 2011

Today was our day to finish assembling boxed sets in preparation for Monday’s shipping. It was also the day that the contractor arrived to deconstruct Howard’s office, but that is a tale for a different post. It did make for a chaotic day with boxes of books being shuffled around at the same time that large rolls of carpet and broken sheet rock were being hauled out. As with last time, the book assembly line began with Howard signing books.


This time all of the kids were home and they all wanted to help. They were particularly excited about helping once they realized that mom was willing to pay by the hour. I carried boxes in from the garage. Kiki helped un-box books and shuffle piles around. Gleek helped Janci slide books into boxes. Patch and Link pulled slipcases out of boxes and gathered up the garbage that Kiki and I were throwing around.


The quantity of garbage was pretty impressive before we were done.

Then Gleek, Patch, Link and I had to head out for swimming lessons. We left Howard, Kiki, and Janci working. They finished off all the book signing. We returned with lunch and the work shifted over into shrink wrapping. Both the shrink wrapping and set assembly were complicated by the fact that we were working on the sketched box sets. This means that each boxed set included a sketched Scrapyard of Insufferable Arrogance. We had to make sure that the outside of the box sets indicated which sketch was included inside. Post-it notes were very useful in helping us keep track. We used a wrapper to surround the boxes with plastic an seal the plastic. Then a heat gun is used to shrink the plastic to fit.


The heat gun was unquestionably the coolest part of the process. The kids all wanted a turn, except Link who was more interested in the game he was creating on the floor of his bedroom. Kiki and Gleek traded off for awhile. Then Patch took a turn. We supervised pretty carefully, but Patch still burned his finger. Kiki took over the wrapping while Howard and I helped Patch. Gleek was then queen of the heat gun and got really good and making the plastic beautiful and smooth.


Howard took a turn with the heat gun too. Here he takes aim at Schlock, who is taking aim at something else.

It was 4 pm before the work was done, a solid 7 hour day. At one point Kiki looked around and said “This really puts meaning into the term Family Business.” And it does. Having the kids working was sometimes helpful and often chaotic. I spent as much time hovering as I did working, but I think it was really good for the kids to be a part of this process. Now they can look at box sets and know that they had a part in making that shiny shrink wrapped package.