Sandra Tayler

Busy days

By / June 17, 2008 / 1 Comment

I intended to blog yesterday. I even began composing entries in my head. But then things happened. They weren’t big things, just one little thing after another. Then the day was gone. Most of the things had to do with either kids or the cover for the next Schlock Mercenary book. The cover is almost done, but the kids are no where near finished yet. This is fine. I always knew parenting was a long-haul project. This week’s kid issues mostly have to do with Gleek. She has been noticeably harder to manage for the last month or more. I’m not sure whether that is due to the schedule disruption due to the end of school, or because the days are longer and so she’s getting less sleep, or just because she’s turned a developmental corner into a pushing-the-limits phase. My best guess is that all of these things are factors. So I’m trying to make changes to the things I can and I’m breathing deep to practice patience. In the area of “kid things going well” Link’s tumbling lessons are being perfect for him. I love to see Link pushing himself physically. He isn’t naturally good at sport suff, so I’m glad that he has something that motivates him to practice. Kiki and I are working together to reset her biorhythmic clock so that she’s sleeping at night instead of all morning. Patch has been skating under the radar lately. I should probably pay more attention to him.

Up next for this week are final layout and edits for the interior of The Teraport Wars. We are on the very final leg of the book-creation marathon. We have to get this book done and gone before Howard leaves for the first of his Summer conventions. Yesterday we printed out the cover so we could see it on paper. I cut it out and folded it into a little book. It was oddly satisfying to see it in my hands book shaped. In the business spaces not occupied by Teraport Wars, I’m still working to promote Hold on to Your Horses. The orders continue to trickle in, but I need to do some legwork to make sure that they continue to do so. One of the things I want to do is post translated versions as PDFs. Angela’s native language is Russian, so we’ll start there. I’ve lined someone up to do a translation into German. But there are so many other languages out there that it would be wonderful to have. I can’t afford to go to print with the translations, but creating PDFs only costs me a little time.

And now I have to go make dinner.

Snapshot of today

By / June 15, 2008 / 2 Comments

Today Patch spiked his hair for church. All during the meeting his hand kept sneaking up to carefully touch the spikes and make sure they were still there. He was adorable sitting there on the bench with his brand new white shirt. The new shirt is long enough that it stays tucked in. Patch didn’t like that. He wanted to untuck it. Five years old and he’s already developing his own sense of style.

Further down the bench was Link wearing a matching white shirt. Link’s shirt was also new, but he was more pleased with the new tie. It is a bright blue zipper tie. No more difficult knots for Link, he just slips the tie around his neck and zips it right up. Link not so happy about the new pants. They were big on him, but better than the ones he had been wearing. Link has grown so much lately that the old pants no longer covered his ankles.

Kiki was also on the bench. She was the only child on the row who didn’t have new clothes today. Since she has more Sunday options than anyone else in the family, I do not feel guilty about this. She’s gotten tall and slender and beautiful as she has transitioned into being a teenager. Her hair is almost as long as mine now. Today she was tired. She’s been taking advantage of the summer to stay up late. We need to watch that or she’ll become entirely nocturnal.

Gleek also sported new clothes. It was a purple dress that used to belong to Kiki. It has been hanging in my closet for years waiting for her to grow tall enough. Today we checked and it fit. Gleek danced with delight and then held very still while I brushed the tangles from her hair. The chlorine from daily swimming has been hard on her hair and so the tangles were fierce, but she held very still and didn’t cry once.

It was a good turnout for Father’s day. After church was over and everyone changed, we had a procession to give Howard some small gifts and some hugs. Later in the day Howard played his new game for the entertainment of the kids. I got to work on my family book project. There was a nice dinner. It was a good day.

The invasion of fruit

By / June 14, 2008 / 10 Comments

Sometimes changes to our family routine come with a bang. I’ll announce to the kids what the change will be and then I enforce the change until it becomes habit. Other times change happens without my planning it at all. I’ve noticed one of these second changes lately. The kids have been eating healthier. This is primarily because I stopped buying crackers or chips and started buying fruit instead. The disappearance of crackers and chips from our diets is the fault of the ants. There is a nest of ants that cruises the floor of our dining area. Anytime they found crumbs, the ants would come out in force. Then I would spend a mealtime exhorting the kids to stop paying attention to the ants and eat. My kids are incapable of eating crackers or chips without strewing crumbs everywhere. I’m not likely to remember to sweep after every snack. The best solution was to just stop supplying the crumby food.

Unfortunately the exit of crackers and chips left us with a snack vacuum. I needed something to hand the kids when they were hungry between meals. Enter the fruit. It started with apples and bananas. Then Patch mentioned that he’d eaten plums at preschool and liked them. So I brought home plums. I bought nectarines too since they were sitting right next to the plums in the store. Both were eaten and enjoyed. On my next trip to the store I cruised around the produce section to see what caught my eye. Grapes came home and so did limes because Gleek had expressed a desire to eat one. (That was amusing. She claimed to like them because they tasted just like her favorite lime-flavor chips, but she did not eat very much.) I started serving fruit with every lunch. It made lunches easy. Sandwiches alone were boring, but if there was a new kind of fruit to try, that was interesting. Then one day I’d forgotten to stock up fruit. I put out celery with ranch dressing, and they ate it.

Treats have not disappeared entirely. We still have treatish food for bedtime snacks, but even there we’re doing more bagels and fewer cookies. I think we’re going to be trying lots of different kinds of fruits this summer. Today I bought kiwi fruit. I know lots of people who love them, but I’ve never been able to get past that brown fuzzy skin. Tomorrow’s lunch will have kiwi. I don’t know whether I can make this change permanent, but I have hopes that the trend will last. It isn’t any harder to reach into the fridge for fruit than it is to reach in the cupboard for a fruit roll up. Granted, fruit will go bad if I leave it around for too long, but if we’re eating fruit daily, that won’t happen. All I know is that for now I’m enjoying this exploration into the world of fruit eating.

Summer day

By / June 13, 2008

The schedule I’ve been running these past two weeks is not working. It was better the second week than the first week, but it still qualifies as broken. The good news is that swim lessons run in two week long sessions and starting on Monday I get a brand new schedule. The new schedule has me running one child to swim lessons mid-morning instead of running three children back and forth to swim lessons all morning long. Patch and Kiki are done with swim lessons for the summer. Gleek gets two more weeks. Link is still in Summer school.

Today there were no swim lessons because it was “free swim” day. The kids were all excited about getting to just play in the water. I was very excited about the thought of not having to go anywhere. To resolve this conflict I pulled out my stash of new water toys. I drew aliens on the wooden fence with chalk, then I armed the kids with water squirters to combat the alien monsters. When all the monsters were defeated, the kids drew more monsters and kept playing. This continued until lunch time. After lunch the kids flooded the sandbox and had a glorious, muddy mess. They played in the back yard with water for most of the afternoon. I caught up on my housework, and my shipping, and my email, and my book promotion efforts, and my sleep. I even got a chance to catch up with a couple of good friends. It has been a very nice day.

Online communities

By / June 12, 2008 / 1 Comment

I belong to four online communities. Two are very comfortable places for me. Livejournal is a very happy community for me because it allows me to follow content I am interested in and to be oblivious to the mass of other content. I love being on Livejournal. I love the connections and new friends that I have made by being here. I’m also very comfortable in the Schlock forums, but this is because I have a special status as “Goddess of the Schlockiverse.” The status means that people are always polite and attentive when I decide to post. I don’t post often. I’m a lurker by nature. (This is true in person as well. In a small group I’ll hold up my part of the conversation, but in a large group, I will lurk.)

The problem with lurking is that while I get to know other people, they don’t get to know me. This isn’t such a big deal with in-person contacts, because even though I don’t speak, other people can read attentiveness in my body language and learn a little about me. It is different online. People who lurk in online communities are invisible. I lurk in a community for a long time. I learn who everyone else is. I learn the social rules of the community. Then I post something, and I get little or no response because none of those people know me from Adam.

One of the other communities I belong to is a private writers forum. I got into it on the strength of one professionally published story and knowing several members. It is full of fascinating information and interesting people. But I’m not writing fiction right now, so very little of the information is immediately relevant. There is also an emotional disconnect because I wonder if I should be there at all. I’m not writing right now, and even when I do start writing again, I don’t know if I’ll be following the traditional paths to publication that they are all focused on. Much of this disconnect will likely be alleviated when I meet many of these people at Worldcon in August. They will become more real to me and I will become real to them.

The last community is one I just joined last week. It is http://www.workitmom.com/. It is a community for working mothers. I signed up primarily because it was the best way I could find to get in touch with one of their featured bloggers. Since I’m already signed up, I want to go ahead and give the community a try, but it feels like an awkward fit right now. I’m definitely a working mother, but I spent a full decade completely happy as a stay-at-home mom. This site has several discussions where mothers who work are trying to deal with thoughtless comments from mothers who don’t. It was never said right out, but I felt like these women did not believe it was possible to be an intelligent, completely fulfilled woman without working. I know that is false because I was completely happy and quite thoroughly challenged being a stay-at-home mom. That was a good way to spend a decade. The fact that I’m now happy and challenged to be a work-from-home mother has more to do with the fact that, after a decade, I was ready for something new, than that working from home is better than not working. If I’d spent the first decade of my adult life working, I would probably be shedding my job right now so that I could stay at home with my kids. I’m sure that there are wonderful people on the Work It Mom site who will truly understand this perspective. There are kindred spirits there, but I’ve no clue how to find them. I want to lurk, but that doesn’t help them find me. I also was hoping to use the site to promote Hold on to Your Horses, but that feels like sheer commercialism unless I also get involved in the community and make friends.

I’m not sure what the answers are, if there are any. Much of the problem may simply be the newness of these second two communities in my life. I’ve been in the Schlock forums for 8 years and Livejournal for 4 years. Perhaps online forums are like shoes that have to be worn awhile before they are truly comfortable.

Happy Birthday Schlock!

By / June 12, 2008 / 2 Comments

Eight years ago today Howard posted the first Schlock Mercenary strip. At that moment we began a ride that has taken us some very unexpected places. I did not expect my husband to transform into a professional cartoonist. I did not expect to transform into a business manager. I did not expect to be this happy or this busy. I did not expect to be self-publishing books or shipping them. I did not expect us both to be working from home. I could go on and on listing the small and large effects which that first act of creation put into motion.

Happy Birthday Schlock! It’s been a good trip and it ain’t over yet.

Consequences

By / June 11, 2008 / 6 Comments

This morning Gleek and I had to discuss consequences. Gleek wanted a definition of the word. I found a way to describe it that I really like and will probably use again. It went like this:

Me: If you hold a rubber ball in your hand and you drop it, what happens?

Gleek: It bounces.

Me: Right. The fall and the bounce are the consequences. Once you choose to let go, you also get the fall and the bounce. Now what if you hold something fragile and glass in your hand and then you drop it?

Gleek: It smashes.

Me: Right. That is also a consequence. Sometimes consequences are things we want, like the ball bouncing. Sometimes consequences are things that we don’t want, like the broken glass. So we need to think ahead when we choose to make sure the the consequences are something that we want to live with.

Scene at the pool

By / June 11, 2008 / 5 Comments

Gleek loves swim lessons. She loves them so much that she practices and practices her skills. She has amassed a whole repertoire of water tricks, most of which she tries to display while her teacher is trying to explain something else. I have great sympathy for Gleek’s swim teacher. “Stay put and listen” is not something Gleek does well even in less enthralling circumstances than a noisy pool full of kids and splashing. By the end of 30 minutes the teacher is very ready to hand Gleek back to me. Unfortunately the hardest part of swim lessons is getting Gleek out of the water. She has an endless stream of “one more things.” Each one delays the moment of pool exit. I get to stand on the edge of the pool, fully dressed, coaxing and warning of consequences. The problem is that all the swim lessons are scheduled back to back. The teacher needs Gleek out of the pool quickly, so that the next class can be welcomed. Today Teacher solved this problem by lifting Gleek out of the pool and handing her directly to me. This tactic did not go over well with Gleek.

It is not fun to stand at the side of a pool, holding the arm of a sopping wet, screaming child, who is desperately trying to jump back into the water. This especially not fun with a full audience of other parents and children. One of the things that I’ve had to learn while parenting Gleek is that to manage her appropriately I have to ignore the fact that I have an audience. If I go softer on her in public because people are watching, then I am just guaranteeing a future public showdown because she will push limits until the showdown is necessary. This is not because she is deliberately trying to defy me, she is just so full of energy that any limits feel confining to her. But the limits are necessary to keep her safe and to make sure that her behaviors do not impinge on the safety or enjoyment of others. We all have to accept limits.

I scooped the dripping, screaming Gleek into my arms and began to carry her from the pool. She was screaming that she wanted to show her teacher just one more thing, please just let her show one more thing. Truth be told, if I’d let her back into the water, Gleek would have done the one more thing and gotten back out happy. Probably. She might have asked for another one more thing. And another. But the teacher was gone and the next classes were already in the water. The time for showing things to teacher was over. Gleek wiggled free and ran toward the water. I called to her that if she got back into the water I was going to have to cancel the rest of her swim lessons because she couldn’t obey the pool rules. She stopped. She could tell that I really meant it. She did not get back into the water, but she did not stop screaming either.

A big tantrum has momentum. Even if Gleek can see that the original point is lost, she is still filled with emotion and it has to go somewhere. It takes real skill for a person to head off such a huge emotional head of steam. Gleek is working on developing those skills. Sometimes she amazes me with the control she has over herself. Even today in the midst of shrieking tantrum, she exhibited control. She did not jump in the pool. She did hit me, but she totally pulled her punches. Gleek is small for a seven-year-old, but she’s all muscle. She could really wallop if she wanted to. But even though she was mad enough to really do some damage, she didn’t. I could barely feel the “hits.” When I carried her out, she struggled, but she did not go into a full-out panicked thrash. If she did that, I would not be able to carry her at all, she is too big and strong these days.

There may have been parents at the pool who were totally shocked at my child’s behavior. They may have seen her as completely out of control and me in dire need of a parenting coach. They’re wrong. Yes we had a huge scene at the pool today, but Gleek was not out of control. She and I were both working very hard to reign in some out-of-control emotions that she was feeling. She was already winding down as we left the building. Once in the car, she started crying for her blankies. That’s a sure sign that the storm is over. I assured her that we were going to them as soon as we could. She started to wind back up crying for her blankies RIGHT NOW. I pulled the car over to the side of the road. I told her I was stopping to give her blankies, but I didn’t have them in the car with me. I’d like to drive to go get them, but I couldn’t drive with screaming in the car. Then there was silence punctuated by some sniffles and a little bit of foot kicking to vent the last of the feelings.

At home we snuggled with the blankies and talked about the event. We talked about why it happened and how to make sure that it does not happen again. We also discussed what consequences should be applied today to make sure that we don’t have a scene at the pool again. Gleek suggested she have to run a mile. Instead I said that she can’t play with friends today. This makes the rest of the day unpleasant for us all, but this one unpleasant day will insure that Gleek is a perfect angel at swim lessons for the rest of the summer. One of Gleek’s strong points is that she remembers. Once we have had a big scene to define a limit, she will remember where that limit is and stay well inside it. Gleek does not like the tantrums either.

We finished with a bath for her and dry clothes for me. That gave us a fresh start on the rest of the day. It seems to have worked, because the day is going smoothly.

The Hold Horses pre-order

By / June 10, 2008 / 19 Comments

Yesterday morning Howard blogged about Hold on to Your Horses. This was it. This was the big moment when people would either plunk down money, or they wouldn’t. The first order came in and I almost cried. Someone who I’ve never met or even heard of before liked the book enough to spend money on it. It was a small piece of proof that I’d helped create something that people could love even if they didn’t know or love me. Over the course of the day lots more comments and orders came in. There were many emails, some from friends, some from strangers. Each one brought me joy. I am so grateful for each and every one of these messages.

I need them all very much because not as many orders came in as I’d hoped for on that first day. A couple of days ago I talked about feeling like a sky diver who had already jumped from the plane and not yet pulled the parachute cord. I talked about hoping for a solid parachute. Deep inside I was actually wondering if I’d pull that cord and have a jet plane pop out. That’s what happens for Howard’s books. His pay for themselves in less than 24 hours. But he has spent 8 years carefully building a fan base. Not all of those people are going to be interested in my project just because I’m married to Howard. They’re his fans, not mine. (Except for a few of you. Hi! Thank you!) Hold on to Your Horses still has a long way to go before it pays for itself. It has an even longer way to go before I could feel good about investing time and energy into another self-published project, which I’d dearly love to do. I guess what I really want is a hang glider rather than a parachute. I want this project to have wings. I think it can, but I’m going to have to put even more work into it. I’m going to have to get that free PDF out there. I’m going to need to arrange blog book tours. I’ve got other ideas as well. Mostly I need to feel good about where we’re at, instead of whining “Are we there yet?” before the car even gets out of the driveway.

So here is the request for help. If you read this blog and you have thoughts or ideas about how I can further market my book online, please comment. I can’t do any physical appearances until after I have books in hand. Right now I just want to get the pdf out there to as many people as I can so that they can fall in love with the book and come buy it.

Edited to add: If you have friends who would be interested in Hold Horses, I’d love for you to tell them about it, but PLEASE do not perpetrate spam on my behalf. Thanks!

Addendum: My sister reminds me (and she is right) that what I need to be shooting for is “sleeper hit” status, not “blockbuster” status. This lets me see that things are going really well. We’ve already had more than 3000 downloads of the free pdf.

Two last things. I hope that no one feels obligated to buy my book, particularly if finances are tight. Bills before books. I hope that no one feels obligated to blog or email people about my book. If you don’t want to for any reason, no excuses are necessary. Thanks again.