Book Production

Scattered Attention and Updates

When I wrote about how noisy it was in my head and in my house I thought the noise would subside more quickly than it has. The internet noise shifted tone, but did not cease. Which doesn’t surprise me. The internet is always noisy and outraged about some thing. It just bothered me more this time around because the arguments punched some of my personal anxiety buttons. The construction work we were having done to finish a room for my boys is complete. We now have a room that will be ready for occupation as soon as carpet is installed. The quieting of these things has been significantly offset by the fact that we launched our Kickstarter. Then it funded in less than 24 hours. Now I’m hoping very much that we reach the $150,000 stretch goal so that we can afford to create and print the in-world book 70 Maxims for Maximally Effective Mercenaries. I’m also buried under huge piles of email and the more people who back the project the more email rolls in. My email response time has gone way down and I feel bad about that because the backers deserve better.

On the parenting front, we appear to have reached a stable place. I’m no longer having to respond to emotional crisis multiple times per week. I feel a bit cautious saying that, we haven’t been stable long enough for me to feel secure. I’m also aware that this stable place is not a place we want to stay. There is a big difference between “not in crisis” and “living a full and growth-filled life.” Even with the increased quiet my time and attention are being impacted with extra meetings, managing homeschooling, and figuring out how to switch everything over to a summertime mode. Meanwhile my other son’s teacher seems determined to squeeze in all the assignments she didn’t get done earlier. The onslaught of homework is significant, particularly for my son who has been feeling overwhelmed. Also my teenage daughter has had some standard issue teen drama to work through. (Can I say how light and fluffy that felt to me in comparison to what I’ve helped kids through in the last two years? I kind of want to hug her emotional drama and shout “It’s so fluffy!” like that little girl in Despicable Me.) My college daughter comes home in two weeks and I’m really hoping the carpet is installed in time for me to move the boys out of the room where she’ll be staying.

One of the exciting things this week was that Howard and I decided that I need to be at GenCon this year. We’re running and RPG Kickstarter and then I’m helping make the book. There are things about a community that can only be understood by participating in that community. So off to GenCon I go. Hopefully sometime between now and then I’ll find a way to re-open the writer portions of my brain which have been shut down since some emotional stuff slammed me the first week of March. If nothing else, I’ll get to hang out with all the writer people at GenCon and I’ll get to see our booth crew whom I’ve only had the chance to meet once. I’m really looking forward to it.

Preparing for Planet Mercenary

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As the picture says, next Tuesday we’ll be launching our Kickstarter funding drive for Planet Mercenary The RPG. We’ve been excited about this project for quite a while. The thing about running a Kickstarter is that you do all the work to prepare for it, so you can do all the work to run it, so that you can do all the work to create the product, so you can do all the work to deliver on your promises. The whole thing is made out of work and worry. Yet we love this idea. We love the game mechanic that Alan Bahr has created. We love the art that we’ve already got. We’re really excited to see the rest of the art when we have the money to fund it. We’re excited by the stretch goals we’ve got planned. I am really looking forward to holding a book in my hands and knowing that I helped to make it happen.

Today my part of making it happen meant I had to go clean up space in our warehouse/office so that Howard and a crew can film the Kickstarter video. So I spent several hours collapsing boxes and putting things away. I found the piles left over from running a booth at LTUE in February. And some of the stacks of boxes were still sitting around from the massive shipping in November and December. Cleaning was definitely overdue.

Warehouse before

The good news is that most of what was jumbled around is recyclable cardboard. Even better, there is a transfer station down the road which is glad to see all the cardboard we can bring. The warehouse hasn’t looked this good in a long time.

Warehouse after

Tomorrow morning Howard and I will go dress up the front office so that tomorrow afternoon friends can help us film. I’m quite glad we have experienced friends to help, because last time for a Kickstarter video we had me, a camera, Howard in the front room, and no editing. We’ll do better this time.

New Cover for Cobble Stones Year 2011

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I’m pleased to announce that Cobble Stones 2011 has a new cover. I’m so very pleased with how it turned out. The cover designer I worked with was brilliant and she created something much better than the one I put together for myself. This cover does a much better job of conveying what the essays inside are about: growth and overcoming difficult things. The essays inside are the same as they’ve always been. For the first 100 copies, this cover will be a dust jacket over the old cover. After that I’ll print up new books with this cover on them.

You can find the book at our store, amazon, and Barnes & Noble.

Post Shipping Clean Up

Let me show you my piles of boxes in the wake of the Massively Parallel shipping.
First the front office where we did the complicated shipping.
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You can see the pile where we tossed boxes because we didn’t have time to collapse them. There is also a pile of collapsed boxes as well.

Out in the warehouse we have two box piles. One between the pallets of books.
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Another where we’ve also stashed bags full of garbage. The garbage backs are mostly full of the plastic wrapping which came around all the pallets.
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We did collapse some of the boxes and made a stack. It helped that we immediately re-purposed many boxes and sent them out with the contents of large orders, like the eleven book sets.
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You can also see my stack of wooden pallets. There are at least a dozen of them.
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This is my shipping space in the front office. This is where I assembled complex orders. It looks relatively neat now. Earlier it had boxes full of sketched books sitting open all over the floor.
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Here is a before and after comparison of the stacks of slipcases. You can see that we’ve used up almost eight pallets worth of slipcases. You can also see that we have another row behind them.
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Some time next week Kiki and I will collapse all the boxes, donate the cardboard to worthy causes, haul off the garbage, figure out what to do with the pallets, and if we have any energy left, sweep.

Shipment Delivery: Complete

It was all lined up. Delivery of books and slipcases on Monday. I had a crew to help. Tuesday I’d help Howard sign book covers and then fetch Kiki home for Thanksgiving in the afternoon. Wednesday would be shipping prep and Thanksgiving prep. I’d done my necessary advance preparation. I’d done some preliminary sorting of invoices. Our cat “helped.”
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I also ordered shipping supplies so I could begin mailing as soon as my delivery arrived.
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It went sideways on Monday morning at 9am, when the trucking company called to tell me that their lift gate truck was broken. They were hoping to borrow one for the afternoon. This sent me scrambling to reschedule my volunteers. The company wasn’t able to borrow a truck, so Monday was spent waiting for a truck that did not come. This meant Tuesday was delivery day and fetch Kiki from college day. I was told the truck would be there around 11:30. I pulled up to the warehouse a comfortable 45 minutes early, just as the truck also pulled up. So I had to ping my helpers saying “Truck is here!” Fortunately some of them were able to jump and come right away. The truck had 22 pallets, double stacked.
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As the stacks came off the truck, we organized and put things where they went. Books in one place, slipcases sorted according to type. Fortunately the slipcases are very light. This meant that four people could easily lift and entire pallet.
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Stacking was important because there wasn’t enough floor space for everything side by side. I’m very grateful to my helpers who willingly stacked slipcases three pallets high.
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They also hefted a load of books over to my house where Howard could sign and sketch them. Once the truck was unloaded it headed out to go and fetch the remaining twelve pallets. We were told it would be back in about 90 minutes. I was glad. It meant we could be done unloading by about 2, which would give me comfortable driving hours to go fetch Kiki. (Three hours there, three hours back. She doesn’t have a car and the bus schedule is really inconvenient.) So my crew waited with me for 90 minutes, which is when we got a call letting us know the truck would be another hour. So we went out to lunch, came back and waited some more. The truck finally arrived at 3:30. We were done unloading in about 30 minutes. I finally had all of my shipment.

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I went home to take care of some family things. Because family things do not always wait conveniently for business things. Link had had a rough day. I took him with me for the six hour trek to Cedar City and back. We stopped at the warehouse so that Kiki could see the things she will be helping me ship.
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We have a lot of work ahead of us in the next few days. I still haven’t had a chance to form a new schedule. We need to get shipments to customers as quickly as we can. But first, Thanksgiving.

Saturday Calm

I had just returned from the grocery store and made all the kids help me unload the car. They were happy to discover that I’d bought some treat cereal, so they sat down to eat it while I stowed all the groceries into the fridge and cupboards.

Then Link turned to me and said, “Where are you going, Mom?”
“Nowhere.”
“Then why did you buy all this food stuff?”

Apparently the pattern lately is that we only stock up on food when Mom and Dad have some sort of big event which means we won’t be around to fix food for kids. Looking back, yup, that’s pretty much how things have gone for awhile. Stock up on easy food. Eat easy food. Stare at bare cupboards and fridge while wondering where all the food went. But we’re entering a period when I’m not going anywhere and the deadlines are no longer imminent. I actually have space in my brain to do things like fold laundry, plan ahead for food, and pick up the house.

I’ve also made some time this week to write fiction. I could get used to that.

Howard still has deadlines and urgencies. He’s got events coming up that will impact his schedule. I know things will come up for me to do as well. (Calendar design springs to mind) But on the whole I get to have six to eight weeks where I can’t see a scheduled business disruption. I mean pre-orders will open for the next book on October 13th for Patreon supporters and October 15th for the public. Pre-order days always throw me off, but only for a day or two. The next major disruption will occur when the books and slipcases arrive. Then my life will be taken over by shipping and holiday stuff until the end of the year.

While I’m having my usual holiday shipping chaos, Howard will be entering a six-to-eight week stretch of few disruptions. It is nice when we can arrange for at least one of us to not be scrambling against deadlines. Makes a huge difference to the state of things here at home.

The family disruptions I don’t get to schedule or control. They happen when they happen. Often they happen at exactly the same time as the business disruptions because ambient stress brings everything to the surface. In the next two weeks we’ve got an Eagle Project to make happen, also we need to stop being sick. Sniffles and fevers abound right now.

Yet despite the illness, life feels poised for a period of calm. Massively Parallel is off to the printer. So are the two slipcases. There isn’t anything more I can do to hurry them up, so I’ll turn my attention to other things. And that feels like a nice change.

Recovery Day and Schlock Book Printing

Most of my local friends are beginning to emerge from their post-comic con crashes. I had my crash today. I spent 3-4 mid day hours asleep. The delayed crash is a common experience for me, because I always come home to endless evidence of things not done and I scramble to catch up. Until the exhaustion catches up with me. I didn’t really want to crash today. I had other plans, only I was so tired I could hardly remember what they were. Instead I just had a head of free-floating thoughts and worries, which my brain kept assembling into jumbled predictions about how all the things will go badly in the next few months. Sad that my pessimism and anxiety circuits have more endurance than anything else. Possibly because I try not to use them at all if I can help it.

In the last few days before Comic Con, I was scrambling to ship files to our book printer. There was some concern that we would not be in time to ship books to customers by Christmas. Then there were communication delays due to an email server meltdown. But now I have an estimated schedule, which is tight for everyone, but may put books into my hands the week of November 17. Though experience tells me there may be a delivery variance of a week on either side. A week early would be fantastic. A week later lands in the week of Thanksgiving, which is not ideal, but manageable. So now my job is to be extremely efficient any time the process is waiting on an answer from me. Also, I must double check any time I don’t get a response to make sure that we’re not having another email snafu. My brain wanted to gnaw on all of this and tell terrible stories of unhappy holiday customers. Instead Howard sent me to go sleep and then defended my sleeping against doorbells and phone calls.

The sleeping helped. My brain is no longer foggy, but my desire to Accomplish All the Things is still missing. Also, a couple of my kids have come down sick. This means instead of normal normal we’re getting adapted normal, which, when I look back on our lives, may be more normal for us than normal normal.

At least I found the energy to run some loads of laundry. That’s a start at least.

Book Design Success and Feelings of Competence

Three weeks ago I looked at Howard across the kitchen counter and told him that we either had to have Massively Parallel done by August 30 or we needed to push it off past Christmas. We decided to make a run for completing the book even though it looked nearly impossible. Howard had GenCon. I had the kids starting school. The bonus story was not complete, none of the marginalia was done, and the cover was only drafted. On my end was all the copy editing, layout editing, and frequent book iterations. We shouldn’t have been able to do it, yet this morning I uploaded the files on the completed book.

It seems like by book eleven we would have figured out how not to have a last minute rush, yet we always do. I think some of it is just the nature of nearing the finish line. Suddenly we can see it and everything moves faster. The rest is just that we always have so many projects running that it takes an impending deadline to bring one into focus.

Some things have gotten easier. As I worked, I kept noting the places where I used to panic or fear that I was failing at my job. This time I knew it would be fine. I used to bite my nails any time I tried to use ftp. I don’t anymore. I no longer have a gnawing fear that I’ve made some horrible mistake that will render the whole project useless. I’m still very aware of the limits of my expertise, but for the familiar format of the Schlock books, I know how to do this.

To add to the challenged of this particular book printing, we’re reprinting the first slipcase and printing a second one to house books 6-11. Designing a slipcase is not something I’ve ever done before. Howard made the first one. Yet I sat down Saturday morning with the template for the first slipcase, a ruler, a calculator and my design tools. Within a few hours I had a draft of the slipcase. We refined it over the weekend and that too is ready to go once the printer confirms that my calculations are correct.

While I had my design tools out, I also made a flyer for Salt Lake Comic Con, and a pamphlet that contains Howard’s story “No I’m Fine” along with my essay “Married to Depression.” We’ll be giving these out at SLCC. I dropped these things off at the warehouse, where I walked around and tried to picture how we would fit the shipment of Massively Parallel along with both slipcases. Fortunately the slipcases are light and can be stacked high. We’ll have to because we don’t have enough floor space for the probable 15-20 pallets that will arrive. Much of that will go right back out the door again, but we need to be able to fit it all inside and shut the doors against the weather. There are times when I’ve laid in bed at 2am being panicked about not having enough warehouse space. Today I looked around and knew we could make it work. We’re going to have to do some shifting around. I may have to purchase some industrial shelving, but there is space enough.

It feels good to have the book under weigh. The rest of this week will be devoted to SLCC. Then it will be time to dive in on the 2015 Schlock calendar and the necessary preparations for book pre-orders. After SLCC my life should slow down for a while. I’d like that.

Crunch Time

In advance of GenCon there are a hundred tasks to be done. Each task is simple taken by itself. The tricky part is remembering to do all of them and sorting them so that they are accomplished during the right windows of time. Merchandise must be shipped early enough to arrive. Ditto Banners. I have to put a credit card on file with the hotel, but that can’t be done earlier than a week in advance. The cash register must be updated. Schedules must be coordinated between the seven person team that is required to run the booth. Each of those listed tasks actually breaks down into a multitude of little steps and I have to remember them all. My task list is always full in the weeks before a large convention.

We actually have two large conventions coming. Salt Lake Comic Con follows GenCon by only two weeks. It is a slightly simpler convention to prepare for, partly because it is local, partly because we have a smaller booth and smaller crew (only four people.) Also some of the work done for GenCon can double for SLCC. We’ll just use the same banner, for instance. Yet there are some time-sensitive tasks related to SLCC that I must also track.

During the week between these two large conventions, my kids will start school. For the younger three, this means we’ve been doing wardrobe assessment and discovering that most of them need some new clothes, underwear, or socks. They’ll use the same school bags that they had last year, but we’ll stock them with new folders and binders. I’ve also been having the kids sort and organize their bedrooms so that they’re both mentally and physically organized for the school year to come. On top of that, Patch had some over-the-summer homework which we ignored until this week. For Kiki “starting school” means that she’ll be packing up all of her things and on the Saturday after Howard comes home from GenCon, I’ll be driving her back to college. Kiki does her own packing and organizing these days, but there are a few tasks, such as making the tuition payment, which require my participation.

Speaking of kid things, between now and the end of August is the time frame that we’ve declared for the completion of Link’s Eagle Scout project. We made a fantastic start with selecting the project, getting it approved, and clearing the site. Then for the last week we’ve been stalled, waiting for someone to get back to me with information. She never did. Instead I had to go shake the information out of an entirely different person and unfortunately the information wasn’t “Sure you can have a donation of materials.” It was “Before we can consider your request we need you to get tax ID numbers for Habitat for Humanity and your scout troop.” The request is reasonable, but it means I’ve left messages with additional people and now I’m waiting for them to call me. I hate waiting. I also hate not being able to clearly see how this project will fit with all the other things. Am I going to spend portions of next week helping Link set up construction help or am I going to spend the next week helping Link figure out how to secure funding? I can’t know until people return my calls and we then go petition in a written letter for a donation of materials.

To make the next few weeks even more interesting, we’re trying to push to send Massively Parallel off to print by August 30. I approve of this push. We need it to line up the Holiday season in the ways it needs to go. It means a pile of work for Howard. It also means work for me, but we’d really love to have the book done in time to let people buy it for Christmas.

I have another book I’d hoped to have ready for Christmas, the Cobble Stones holiday-themed book. There is still time, but my timing sense is telling me I’m already late in prepping it. I should be half way through sending it through writer’s group and I haven’t submitted any of it because I haven’t yet revised any of it. Because I’ve barely had space to do anything that wasn’t already on my task list. It seems like all the minutes of all of my days are spent juggling my priorities so that nothing falls apart. Writing so seldom gets juggled to the top. I know the common wisdom is that I must then seize the time for writing. That is the writer-correct thing to do, but I get very tired. Except tired isn’t quite the right word. I’m not sleepy, I just run out of focus. Writing flows when I have spaces to think and consider. I haven’t had those lately. I probably won’t have them for weeks more. So instead of having words flow naturally out of my thoughts, I have to find the force of will to untangle them from the rats nest of other thoughts which haven’t had time to settle.

Other things that are taking up space in my brain this month:
We’ve had to renew our life insurance policies. This required meeting with an insurance agent whose job it is to first make us very afraid of death and then to convince us that we should salve that fear with large policies. We opted for a policy that will give us two years to find a new normal rather than the set-for-life policy which would have cost more than we can afford annually. Then we had to answer health questionnaires over the phone which made us realize that we’re not the golden life insurance prospects that we once were. It costs more to insure us now. On Monday a tech is going to come and do some blood tests and other basic health measures. After which the insurance company will tell us how much we’ll owe as an annual premium. Whee.

We’re going to have to find a new health insurance provider between now and December 31. We’re probably going to end up enrolled in an ACA program. I’ve barely begun to think about this, but knowing I’m going to have to figure it out looms in my head a little.

We ought to meet with an estate lawyer and set up a living trust. I mean, while we’re dealing with thoughts of mortality, life insurance, and health insurance. Why not just get all the unpleasantness managed.

Last week Howard and I had a meeting where we laid out a timeline on the Schlock RPG, which is a project that requires a Kickstarter. Next year could be one that is completely taken over by running and fulfillment of Kickstarter promises. That’s fine. I’m excited by the things which we might get to make. This combined with everything else means that next year’s schedule is full. Already. Which is a daunting prospect when I’m only nine days into a month that promises to be packed to the gills all the way to the end of it.

Updates

My neck/back has continued problematic ever since I injured it last Tuesday. (While sleeping. Cosmically unfair that.) It is steadily improving. Regular stretching, heat packs, ibuprofen, and ointments have given back a range of motion that is almost normal. It is to the stage where I think it doesn’t actually need much more treatment. It just needs to stop being mad about being out of joint. I’ve picked a day next week and if I haven’t hit “all better” by then, I’ll go ahead and spend money to have it looked at. Less fun is the fact that I think the “out of joint” point on my back is also a hidden anxiety button. Not my favorite, but that is coming back into control too.

Gleek is home from camp. She arrived dirty and glad to be here. She gave me some hugs, but was far more interested in changing into short pants and getting on the computer than in sitting down to tell me all about camp. I do have a report from a leader that she was fine at camp, so that’s a relief. I’m just really glad to have her home. I missed her.

Stage one of Link’s Eagle Scout project is complete. The project has been approved. Papers are signed. We did the site clean up this morning to prep everything for a shed to go up. Stage two is more paperwork and drumming up donations to pay for the materials to build the shed. We have some leads, but follow up is necessary. Stage two is also more paperwork, because of course there is more paperwork. We plan to have the shed fully installed and the project complete by August 30th. After which there will be more paperwork.

I’ve completed a draft version of the Challenge Coin PDF. On Monday I commence emailing the contributors to get their approvals on the copy edits of their words. Howard will take a copy on the plane to GenCon so he can write the intro and create some cartoons for the interior.

Kiki’s final art show of the summer ends tonight. She’ll bring home all of the unsold pieces and put them up for sale in her etsy shop. Once they’re all in place, then Howard and I will both blog links to that shop. Though if you want a head start, she does have a few things there now. All of those proceeds will go directly toward her college tuition and living expenses while at school. She leaves in three weeks, but I’m not quite ready to think about that yet. I’ve really enjoyed having her home for the summer. She will be missed.

School starts in two weeks. I’ve paid most of the fees, got the schedules set up. Filled out the beginning of school forms. While Howard is at GenCon we’ll probably have the traditional end-of-summer family outing where I drag my kids someplace and then make them stand together for a photo. I do try to pick locations that I think they will like. Though it is possible that I’ll be so tired that I just make them stand together in the back yard. Or maybe I’ll just catch them at a moment when they’re all watching the same movie or playing a video game all together.

We’ve not done any further work on the dirt patch which used to be our deck. I do walk out there occasionally and look at the leaky sprinkler pipe I dug up. I was going to google sprinkler pipe repair and get it taken care of, but then there was an Eagle Project instead. I suspect this will continue to be the case throughout the rest of August. That’s fine. The cooler weather of September is probably better for fixing up the yard anyway.

While writing this post I scanned back through my blog to see if there were any other loose ends that I ought to update. It is funny how the events I chronicled in May, June, July seem simultaneously recent and long ago. August has barely begun, but it feels as if summer is pretty much over. Part of that is because once school starts, my brain assumes it is September. I’ve got two weeks left. I need to remember to stop, breathe, pay attention rather than rushing from one project to the next.