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I’ve spent some time thinking about opportunity in the past few months. The thing about opportunities is that they require action. Chancing upon an open door does not benefit you unless you muster up the energy to walk through the doorway and act upon what you find on the other side. The other thing about opportunities is that sometimes failure to step through the doorway means that the door will close again. Occasionally what seems like a good opportunity is not as useful as it first seemed. A free couch does not benefit you if you already have a better couch.

Our problem is that we ended up with a series of amazing opportunities all within a short span of time. We have been running ourselves ragged trying to use them all. We reached the point where we realized that we simply have to pass some of them by. It is like passing by the free couch, not because we couldn’t use it, but because we simply don’t have the means to bring it home. And yet we walk away from the opportunity full of thoughts of how wonderful that couch would be if only we could carry it. We have been sorely tempted by some of these opportunities we had to turn down because we’re already overloaded. And I regret the missed chances. Regret can be very heavy indeed.

Opportunity only knocks once, or so goes the old adage. But I’ve realized that is a misleading statement. It is true that if I don’t take this free couch someone else will take it and my chance is gone. But this is not the only free couch in the world. Free couches are listed regularly on craigslist or freecycle. This missed couch does not mean that I will never have a couch. In fact I can be doing things that make acquiring a free couch highly likely and in ways that provide for the couch to be carried to my home. We can make opportunities. Howard and I have the opportunities we have now because of all the work that went before. This is part of the regret for missed chances because in my imagination I also miss all the other chances that might have resulted from this missed chance. And so I become the girl counting chickens before they hatch. The truth is that missing one opportunity is not the end of anything. I can reach out for a similar opportunity again on a different schedule. This chance is not my only chance. I have to believe that.

I’ve been looking forward to the next Writer’s Night Out ever since we had the last one a month ago. But somehow I got to this afternoon and either my social energy was used up or I was tired. I went anyway and I am glad I did. I enjoy my online communities, but there is no substitute for the ramble of an in-person conversation. I want to wax more eloquent, but I am very tired now.

Okay, Howard says it better than I did, so I’m cutting and pasting his call to action here:

You there, Schlock reader! Odds are good that if you want an autographed copy of XDM: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery you’ve already ordered it, or plan to get yours at GenCon. Thank you!

I know that for many of the rest of you a role-play supplement just isn’t “your thing.” That’s fine. I don’t want to sell you stuff you don’t want, don’t need, or won’t like. But you can still help us…

Between now and Saturday we need you to identify friends who role-play (easy indicators: do they have dice in their cubicle? Do they make jokes about gaining levels at work?) and send them this link. That’s not the store link. That’s a link to a glowing review from one of the writers at Role Playing Pro. But it’s not the only one! There’s another one here!

Tracy, Curtis, and I have been trying to tell people how fantastic this book is, but I don’t expect anybody to take our word for it. Today, though, we have some solid feedback from the target market, and it would appear that this book is every bit the “must-have” supplement we’ve been saying it is.

Pre-orders close on Saturday. Monday I’m sitting down with Tracy and Curtis and we’re signing all the pre-ordered books. The next time the three of us will be together will be at GenCon, and then who knows?

So, the call to action. Find friends who role-play, and send them those book-review links. They don’t have to be Schlock readers. They can be players of any table-top RPG — D&D, Shadowrun, GURPS, World of Darkness, Paranoia , Final Redoubt — anything. This book will help them. Samuel and John said so.

The first reviews for XDM X-Treme Dungeon Mastery went live this morning over at Roleplayingpro.com. The guys over there decided to do a double review, one from the GMs perspective and one from a player’s perspective. Both reviews make me want to dance for happiness because they tell me that the book is right on target for what we hoped to accomplish. It made the reviewers both laugh and think.

The timing on this could not be more perfect. We have three more days of the special pre-order period. This means that all of the books ordered before Saturday night will be autographed by Tracy Hickman, Curtis Hickman, and Howard Tayler. So far the trio are going to have to sign about 500 books, but we’d love to make them do more. After the pre-order, books will still be available in our store, but they won’t be signed. Books will also be available at GenCon and we hope to have them in gaming stores this Fall. So if you know a Roleplaying Gamer, please point them at the reviews linked below. Thanks!

The GM Review

The Player Review

This morning began with a list of things to do. There were business things, and house things, and family things, and Sandra things. Many of the things on the list were important, but none of them were particularly urgent. This resulted in a sort of paralysis because choosing one thing to do delayed the other things which were of equal urgency. There was potential for this to be an extremely unproductive day. That would be bad news because delaying important things transforms them into urgent important things and then life is all stressy. I’m ready for a break from stressy. So I grabbed my timer clock and set it for one hour. For one hour I did only house things. I did not let business things distract me and I was excused from worrying about them. In that one hour I cooked breakfast, cleaned up the kitchen, and started the laundry. Then I re-set the timer and spent an hour on business things. Sometimes finishing up a task took a little more than an hour, but the key is that I had a solid break point. At each break, I stopped to reconsider what should come next to make today properly balanced. A well balanced day is like a well balanced diet, it has all the major food groups including a little bit of treat. The timer reminded me to switch off. The result has been a very good day where I finished up lots of odds and ends that have been left dangling for a long time. I need to remember that timers are my friends.

Today I was overcome by the urge to abandon my responsibilities and do something fun. So I shanghaied my friend Janci and we took off for Salt Lake City to find Decades Vintage Clothing. I’d been told that vintage clothing stores are the best places to get truly amazing evening wear, and Decades is the only one in my vicinity. I opened the door and the soft rush of air carried with the smell of my grandmother’s closet. It is a warm and comfortable smell part cedar chest, part moth ball, part organic fabrics, and part aged leather. I love that smell. I stepped inside the store and fell in love further. I had come to a place where I could browse through history, buy a piece, and take it home with me.

We browsed the racks, amusing ourselves by pulling out clothes and wondering aloud who ever thought putting gold rope and purple rhinestones on a mustard colored dress was a good idea. Right next to the atrocious things that were always atrocious, were some items that I would consider atrocious except for the fact that I could tell they were genuine. The dress with the zigzag sequins is not something people would wear now, but if I look at it in the light of the 70’s I can see how it was beautiful. And then there were the dresses that are still beautiful, and unfortunately not my size. I am not generally a fan of lots of bead work on a dress, but some of those dresses were amazing. Bead work done right is stunningly beautiful.

As I continued looking, it occurred to me that all of these dresses have stories. Someone bought it and wore it (or didn’t) for a reason. Was the dress worn often? Was it handed off to a friend? Was it shoved into the back of a closet? By what winding path did this dress survive decades and end up in the store for me to admire? Some of those dresses had the aura of the 20’s and 30’s. It was fun to look at the design choices and guess to which era the dress belonged. Janci and I started made up stories for some of the dresses. “This was a bridesmaid’s dress, and she hated it, but she couldn’t give it away for fear of making her friend mad.”

Dresses were not the only things in the store. There were almost any imaginable type of clothing. We saw a white coat made out of and iridescent plastic fuzz with giant pom poms on the ties. It reminded me of a poodle. There were some awesome hats and some amazing shoes. If my feet were smaller, I would have bought several pairs. The jewelry cabinet was the very definition of shiny. Necklaces, ear rings, bracelets, and cuff links were lined up as close to each other as possible. Some were boggling. Did people really wear earrings the size of a mason jar lid that dangled six inches down? Many were beautiful and would be incredibly stunning with the right clothing to match.

In the end I didn’t even try anything on. Just looking at all the history was so amazing it wore me out, in the same way that visiting a museum wears me out and leaves me with piles of new thoughts to sort through. I will be going back and I will buy something there. I love old clothes and the prices were very reasonable. Most of the jewelry was less than $10. Most of the dresses were about $30. Perhaps next time I go, I will take Kiki. She would love the rack of oriental themed clothing.

I spent most of today in my office with my brain so tangled in accounting that I was only peripherally aware of the kids. I came up at dinner time to discover that crafts had happened. In fact it was more like a craft explosion all across the table and counters. Patch, Gleek, and their friends had colored paper, and cut paper, and torn paper, and folded paper, and taped paper, and thrown paper all over the kitchen. It reminded me once again that my kids are capable of finding hours of amusement in the simplest of objects.

I think I’ve shown this picture before. This was the time that the kids discovered a stash of little cups left over from a book launch party.

Those little colored balls are pellets from an airsoft gun. Gleek and Link carefully collected them all on their walks home from school. I’ve no idea what the rules of the game are, but playing occupied hours of time.

Those gray things are pieces of foam that Howard has picked out of the trays in which he stores his minis. We have a large garbage bag full. Every so often the kids will dump out the bag and make whole towns out of the stuff. This picture was either taken during the early stages of construction, or it is a battle between the two forts. Perhaps they’ll lob airsoft pellets at each other.

Sometimes I wonder why I bother to purchase toys.

I may have some time for writing in the next couple of weeks, but I’m a little afraid to do any. I’ve packed those pieces of myself rather like shoving a suitcase full and sitting on it to get the latches closed. I worry that if I open the suitcase, then the writing thoughts will explode and spill all over. This would be fine except that I only have a small space available. Most of my time in the next few weeks needs to go to family rather than writing. It is time for me to give the kids some of my creative attention to make sure that they don’t end the summer with a list of things not done. I’m eyeing my week at Worldcon and thinking that I may get to do some writing there. I’m also eyeing the start of school and planning to carve out space in the schedule.

Howard and I are already discussing plans for next year. We have to plan far in advance to make sure we have space for the large events. Right now we’re just planning with large brush strokes rather than fine detail. We have to wait and see what opportunities Worldcon and Gencon might create. We also have to plan carefully because we really need to be getting more books into print. We need to be putting out 2-3 Schlock books per year rather than just one. But we keep being presented with jump-on-it-now-or-lose-it opportunities. We have to start turning some of these down. We have to trust that today’s opportunities are not the only ones which will come our way.

Reunions after an absence are one of the most emotion laden times in life. Today I was musing on how these greetings are so often set against an inhospitable background such as a crowded airport. I mused on this while sitting in a noisy McDonald’s Playplace while waiting for my brother to arrive with Gleek. She arrived to interrupt my musing, all tanned and sun bleached and grinning. She hugged me tight and said “I missed you!” softly then she let go and dashed off to play. This left my brother and I to visit for awhile before we sorted out which kids were to return with him (his daughter and her friend) and which ones were to come with me (all of mine.) Gleek had a good adventure. She got to travel places with Grandma and Grandpa. She got to visit lava hot springs. She did crafts and acquired new shiny things. And she is very obviously glad to be home. We’re glad to have her.

With all of us here I found myself naturally planning snack and bedtime, which is something I haven’t done for weeks. It has me longing for a more stable routine. We’re halfway through the summer now. All of June was spent scrambling to meet business obligations. For the first time I can look ahead and think about the small things I can be doing to make sure that this summer is satisfactory for the kids. I called Link’s bestfriend who moved. There will be a get together with him sometime this week. There should also be some swimming that is not attached to swim lessons. There should be park trips. Beyond that, I need to sit down with the accounts and figure out what my budget is for summer fun. It would be nice to visit the local museums and zoos, but that can add up. Also, I need to not over schedule. I want to plan fun stuff with the kids, but there are business tasks yet to do.

Some day I’ll master the whole balancing life and work thing.

There is something about beautiful clothes that makes me happy. Note that I don’t say expensive clothes. I don’t care what the clothes cost, but I love when the lines and the colors work together to complement the wearer. When I was a teen I spent significant amounts of energy selecting clothes so that they were both useful for their intended purpose and were aesthetically pleasing. Then I got married and started having kids. I had less disposable time and energy. I selected clothing for comfort and washability, since trying to maintain any other clothing criteria seemed an exercise in frustration. But I retained the longing for beautiful clothing. I had this buried dream of Howard and I dressing up in formal clothes and going somewhere together. Going to a fancy restaurant did not fit the bill because I could not justify the expenditure of time, energy, and money for and event I created alone, particularly when I knew that I’d only get Howard to dress up because he was humoring me. So the dream languished and I more or less gave it up.

But then Howard became a cartoonist. And then he decided to discard his hawaiian shirts and t-shirts for sharp dress shirts. And I love the change. And then he got nominated for a Hugo award. And suddenly here was a ready made occasion for which Howard wants to dress up and which we can attend together.

Strictly speaking, formal wear is not required for the Hugo awards. I attended last year and there were far more people in t-shirts and jeans than in fancy clothing. But I looked at those who were wearing ball gowns and tuxedos and I wished that I were more dressed up. I wanted to be one of the beautifully dressed people with an escort to match. Howard and I do not have to dress up, but we want to. I want to, just for the sheer pleasure of wearing beautiful clothing to an occasion where other people are also wearing beautiful clothing. We also want to dress up because it is a way to honor all those efforts which made the Hugo awards possible. It is a way to honor those who were nominated. We make the effort to dress up because the occasion is special and may be singular in our lives. The category for which Howard is nominated is not a permanent category. Even if it is made permanent, there is no guarantee that Howard would be nominated again. So we intend to dress beautifully.

Howard and I went Tuxedo shopping today. I loved being part of that process. He picked out a sharp tuxedo that looks really good on him. It is nicer than the suit he wore to our wedding. I am really looking forward to dressing up and going out together. Just thinking ahead to it makes me happy.