A cobble by itself is just a small stone, but when many of them lay together they create a path . My life is made up of many discrete parts. I have to find ways to fit them all into place so that I can continue to journey where I desire to go. This blog records some of the cobbles that create my path.

Merchandise and Gratitude

For the last three weeks Howard and I have spent half our business meetings discussing merchandise ideas, merchandise pricing, probable merchandise sales, and sources for the right merchandise. These meetings were followed by fast email exchanges to refine designs and make orders. This week I can feel things shifting. The design and ordering is still [...]

Score Card for the Week

Projects completed: Gleek’s multi-page mystery story featuring the ghost of the explorer Samuel De Champlain which needed to demonstrate the qualities of an explorer, have at least three clues, have at least three obstacles, be detailed, and typed. With a card stock cover. Kiki’s art project for reflections which she originally envisioned as five small [...]

Budgeting 101

The basic concept of budgeting is this: Dividing your estimated earnings into assigned categories for spending. If you are on a fixed salary this process is fairly simple. I’ll cover some basics, and then talk about some more difficult cases. I am addressing this primarily to people who are not in dire financial need or [...]

Finding places to query

The process looks something like this: See a book on my child’s desk at Parent Teacher conferences. Realize that the book cover and title seems very like the type of book I’ve written. Carefully scribble down title and author when teacher thinks I am writing notes about the conference. When at home, look up the [...]

Financial Management for Creative People 101

The first thing any creative person needs to know about managing finances, whether you’re an artist, a writer, a musician, a film maker, or anything else: Good financial management is a skill. It can be learned by anyone no matter how good or bad they are with numbers. Granted, if numbers are not your friends, [...]

Lists and Staging

This is the week when WorldCon preparations swamps everything else in my life. You’d think that would be next week when I am actually at WorldCon, except that I’ve arranged for everything else to be managed next week. Next week I can give WorldCon 100% attention. This week the preparations are all mixed up with [...]

GenCon and WorldCon

GenCon will open its doors to the public first thing Thursday morning, but I’m already done with it. My very last responsibility to GenCon was to drop Howard off at the airport this morning. He’s going to have a great time. It will be a fantastic show. I’m sorry I won’t get to visit with [...]

Staring at Another Busy Week

My list is full of urgent tasks. I am supposed to be ignoring them because it is Sunday and I don’t work on Sunday. Except that somehow I slid into working today without meaning to. Oh I didn’t ship orders or do accounting, but I did answer a business email. Howard and I have had [...]

Warehouse Day

My teenage boy and two boys borrowed from a neighbor were my minions this morning. The four of us moved three and a half pallets of books from my garage to our storage unit. Each pallet held 56 boxes of books. Each box held 22 books. Each book weighed one pound. Doing the math, we [...]

Shipping Day: Emperor Pius Dei

At the beginning of the shipping day we scramble to explain process to an ever-growing group of volunteers. twenty people stand and wait for me and Janci to sort out what we are doing. We have to pull out our dusty memories of what worked last time and make them fit over the physical changes [...]