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I once read through a collection of short stories by Issac Asimov. They all featured a wish granting demon named Azrael. However, each wish came with a cost and the cost was frequently much higher than the value of the wish. They were classic Monkey’s Paw type stories, but I found them entertaining. The one that has been coming to mind lately is the story of a writer who was constantly frustrated by the small delays in his life. He was always stuck in traffic, waiting for elevators, waiting to get into restaurants, etc. The writer was tired of all of these frustrations, and so when Azrael offered to take them away, the writer accepted with glee. At first the wish was a delight. Traffic magically cleared in front of him, cabs always stopped the moment he went to call one, all the traffic lights were green. But then the cost became apparent. The writer found his ideas had dried up. He could no longer write. Apparently all those delays and frustrations were necessary to his creative process. He begged Azrael to take back the wish, but naturally the demon would not.

Lately I feel like that writer. The spaces in my life that used to generate ideas have been filled other things. Drives where I used to ponder plot points, I now plan how to sort invoices, or what to make for dinner, or which merchandise should come next, or how we should proceed with marketing, or thinking ahead to how to run convention booths. This is not permanent. The writing will wait for me. I can see it ahead, probably later this Fall. The next six weeks are very busy, but then we are getting into a long space with no convention travel. There may be no convention travel for an entire year. That creates space for many things. Mostly it makes space for us to create more Schlock books, but I think there will be fiction from me as well.

Today I broke the schedule. I went to bed on time and then slept until I was done sleeping. Link and Kiki got up early because there was a borrowed video game they wanted to play, but Gleek and Patch slept late too. I never did fix breakfast because no one realized they were hungry until it was time to leave for the Tayler family picnic lunch. All the Tayler siblings were in town, including the branch of the family that resides in Georgia. It was a perfect opportunity to let all the cousins play. Play they did. A water kick-ball course had been created in the back yard. It was a joy to see all those kids, mostly under the age of 8, run and splash. The girl cousins out numbered the boys 10 to 4, so Gleek was in heaven. She is full of plans that we should go visit in Georgia really soon. After the water play, the party moved indoors. I didn’t want to break up the games, so I just hung out for most of the afternoon. I even snuck a nap.

When I arrived home, I discovered that my discouraged post of yesterday had garnered twice as many responses as I usually get. They were all people expressing confidence, offering suggestions, or otherwise lending support. By the time I was done reading, my brain had begun churning over possible courses of action. I suspect that in a short time I will manage to work myself into excitement for the project of marketing Hold Horses, rather than discouragement over work still to be done.

As I was writing responses to all the kind comments, I noticed my backyard neighbor trundling a load of sand into my yard. It turns out that when sand was delivered for their new patio, they had lots more than they needed. They dumped the extra sand into our sandbox as a surprise for us. Even better, the new sand is worlds nicer and softer than the stuff we had before.

Later this evening the Tayler siblings will be descending on our house to play games late into the night. It has been a really good day. It is good for us to break the schedule sometimes. Tomorrow needs to be closer to normal, but I think Thursday will be a play day as well.

Yesterday was a neighborhood potluck picnic in our cul de sac. I love this kind of event. It is wonderful to sit and talk with all the friends that I see in passing, but never have time to really talk to. One friend asked about how Hold on to Your Horses is doing, so I pulled out one of my advance copies to show her. The book kicked around with me for the rest of the evening and several more people read it. Everyone was very complimentary, which was very nice. A couple of people asked when it is going to be available for sale. I told them I expect the truck to arrive next week. I was asked how many books I’d ordered. 2000. I was asked how many I’ve pre-sold. 100. There was a small sound of dismay from the group. Then they ask what I’m going to do next. That is a harder question to answer. Not because I don’t have an answer, but because the answer would require a lecture on basic internet marketing. The didn’t come to a picnic for a lecture and I didn’t want to dominate the conversation, so I mumbled some stuff about blogs and Amazon.com. Then the topic moved on to other things.

Truth is, I’m disheartened that I haven’t sold more copies of Hold Horses yet. I know logically that there is no rush, but I really want this project to be a self-publishing success story rather than the story of a woman who sunk $5000 into printing and now has thousands of books sitting in her basement. I can still get where I want to be, but there is going to be additional work involved. I figure I’ll do my next marketing push after the books arrive. “Buy it now” is much more attractive than “Give me your money and I’ll send you a book in three weeks.” Also, once I have books in hand I can start sending copies to places where the book might garner attention. Perhaps I can volunteer to do an appearance or story time at the library. There are articles that I intend to write, which could potentially help bring attention to the book. 700 books sold is my success mark. At that point, the print run will be paid for and anything beyond that is extra. That is also more than most self-published books ever sell, so I can count it as a success that way as well.

Time to get back to work.

Today I learned that a friend and neighbor was run over by a boat during a youth group skiing trip. He was life flighted to a hospital. His condition is stable now, but it was a very close call. He has surgery ahead of him and then years of physical therapy to recover. He is the kindest, friendliest man I’ve ever known. He took down the fences in his yard and invited all his neighbors to cut through it whenever they wish. He then made the yard into a beautiful park and invited everyone to use it. He always greets everyone with a smile and a joke. If anyone can bounce back from and accident like this one, he can.

Today I am grateful for life vests which keep injured people afloat. I am thankful for helicopters. I’m thankful for first aid training and for paramedic teams. I am thankful for modern medical science. I am grateful that I’m planning to have my children write “Get well soon” cards, rather than re-arranging next week to make space for a funeral.

This morning I shipped files to our printer. It took longer and was more stressful than I anticipated due to needing a full color hard copy that I had to wait for. But I was still done before noon.

All this past week most of my interactions with the kids have been variants of “please go away, I need to work.” Some of the variations were considerably less nice. I knew I owed them some time and attention. I volunteered to take them swimming. This news was greeted with great joy and also the question “will you be getting in the water? It is more fun when you get in.” This plea was not to be ignored. I promised to fully immerse myself in the swimming experience.

The schedule was rearranged when we received an invitation to join relatives to see a matinée of Wall E. It was a great movie pick for us. All of the kids sat still for the entire film, even Gleek. This ranks as a minor miracle. I’d been prepared to haul her out of the film if she was disturbing others. The movie is fun and sweet and I want to see it again because I don’t think I caught all of the depth that is there. Also I want to figure out how they tell a story where the protagonist has a vocabulary of less than 10 words.

Then came the swimming. We got into the pool. Some people are jump-in-the-pool people. I’m a get-wet-slowly person. The kids all jumped right in and began splashing around. Then they noticed that I was not all the way wet yet, so they began to pester me. “You promised mom!” I took the plunge and got all the way wet. That was when swimming started to be fun. I stopped worrying about getting splashed or feeling cold. Instead I splashed and dunked my kids. I took Patch for a spin on his floating tube. I made bridges for Gleek to dive under. I dunked Link when he tried to climb on my back. A good time was had by all, including me.

I need to really immerse myself in activities and play with my kids more often. That would be good.

1. a brand new computer straight out of the box is supposed to work, not necessitate calls to customer service. It is not fun to tell kids that the computer they’ve been waiting for will not play their CD games because it doesn’t believe it has a CD drive.

2. Whose idea was it to put the power button conspicuously on the front of the computer and make it glow blue? They might as well have put a big shiny sticker next to it saying “push this button now” because every child within 10 feet will punch that button as they go past, thus interrupting the downloading of files and software onto the new computer.

3. There is probably a way to create a resizable custom design frame for use in photoshop and InDesign so that the corner pieces of the frame are static, but the sides can be made longer or shorter by dragging the sides of the graphic box. I do not know how to do this, so I am left spending hours trying to carefully line up little graphics to make a frame around the footnotes for the Schlock book.

4. Lining up graphics to make text frames is very difficult in low resolution. When you export to a high resolution pdf, you will be able to see how badly you managed so that you can try to fix it, but you will have to fix it in low resolution, so you can’t know if you have done it right until you export to high resolution pdf again.

5. The program which exported to pdf just fine this morning, should not suddenly start complaining of corrupted JPEGs without telling you which JPEG is corrupt. This is particularly true when the document contains over 1400 images, thus rendering the individual checking of the images impossible. Addendum: A program should not complain of corrupt images when what it really means is “I don’t have enough memory to complete this job, please restart your computer to clear out the mess.”

6. The little girl who is always longing to have friends over, upon the unexpected arrival of friends, should not have to be coaxed/coerced into playing with those friends instead of watching videos.

7. I think I’m the media-permissive parent in the neighborhood. Several times now friends have come over here, but announce that their mother said no TV or video games while they are here. I’m in crunch mode right now. I’m all for throwing electronic entertainment at the kids. I’ll repent later and make them read. I know I need to make them turn the screens off more. I should be getting them out of the house and planning fun activities.

8. My kids showed the sweet neighbor girls an online animation which involved stick figures peeing into a pool and then swimming in the pool. The neighbor girls thought it was hilarious (which it was, I admit) and now they will probably go home and tell their mom all about this great video they saw at my house. I will probably be getting a phone call. Or maybe those girls will just not be allowed to come over any more. Sigh.

9. Grouchy mom = grouchy kids. There has been much yelling today.

It defies logic that I can be so physically exhausted from spending all day at my computer. Granted, all of that time was spent highly-focused as I made changes and adjustments to the layout. I had to pay attention and work hard. Now I feel like a limp noodle. Noodles are not notably good at putting kids to bed, so I need to find some reserve of energy in the next 15 minutes.

Tomorrow I get to do the same thing again, although I hope there will be less to tweak.

As part of my scrapbook project I’ve been skimming through journal entries from last year. Mostly I’m looking for anecdotes about the kids that I can pair up with pictures that I have. Today I happened across an entry from this week last year. I was lamenting my lack of organization in my life. I was frustrated by my inability to keep a daily schedule. I was fearful of what looked to be a long and structureless Summer ahead of me. I need not have worried, the summer became packed and stressful shortly thereafter. What I did not realize at the time was that I was in transition. This time last year is when I made the shift into really being a work from home mother. All the years before that I was a stay at home mother. Because I did not recognize the transition until months later, I was confused why all my daily patterns were falling apart. I had no practical experience to guide me in shifting the family schedules to accommodate work. Also I was far too stressed to be contemplative about much of anything. Stress piled on stress from July until the end of the year. I was stressed. Howard was stressed. Friendships were stressed. Finances were stressed. I look back at my self of a year ago and I want to give her a hug and tell her it all works out.

Things are so different for me this year. We’ve all had a year to establish new family patterns around the fact that I have to do work for the business on a daily basis. In fact, the need to structure my days so that business work gets done has solved my usual Summer-lack-of-schedule problem. Usually by the end of June all semblance of a regular bedtime has gone out the window and meals are very irregular. I expected that for this year and it simply has not happened. There are occasional days where everything gets skewampus, but the schedule rights itself in a day or two. Granted, I’ve sometimes struggled to get the work done with all the kids underfoot, but the family schedule has been working beautifully. We still have some stress ahead for this summer. We have three conventions to prepare for, but we do not have all of the other stresses that combined against us last year. We’ve hit a good stride and we just need to keep going.