Sandra Tayler's Blog, page 89

Casting the Bones: Shipping Inventory to Summer Conventions

The process for deciding how much inventory to ship to a convention is very involved and always stressful.

Step 1: Look at numbers from last year

We’ve been in this business long enough that we have several years of prior numbers to consult. This is particularly true in the case of GenCon where I can look up how much we sold last year and the year before. Yet looking at those inventory numbers shows me all the flaws in my convention inventory management systems. Without fail there is some number I want which is missing. This time it was magnet sales not being itemized out from other things. This means that last year’s numbers over count on a book or two to account for the magnet money. Little bits of fudging on small ticket categories happens every time. Usually it reveals a flaw in my system rather than any fault of those who are on the ground running the booth. More often all the numbers line up perfectly the week after the convention, but then I fail to record them because I am tired and distracted. Or sometimes I record them and then file the record in an odd place. So the seemingly simple task of looking at numbers from last year gets time consuming.

Step 1b: Look up numbers from comparable conventions

WorldCon changes locations every year. The inventory sold numbers from the previous year are kind of useful, but only as a rough guideline because attendance varies. Also our sales vary depending upon whether the location of WorldCon is in a place with a strong Schlock Mercenary fan base. Reno was nearly home turf, Australia was largely new territory and in a foreign country. How much do I use those numbers as guidelines? Or would I do better to use numbers from another convention and multiply by number of attendees? I rarely know the answers, so I usually look up several sets of numbers to have them on hand.

Step 2: Adjust for new releases, cross promotion, and other factors

GenCon has a host of new factors this year. Our booth mates both have big new releases this year. We have our shiny new board game. Also Brandon and Mary will both be at GenCon doing Writing Excuses things with Howard. All of these factors will, in theory, drive additional traffic to the booth and thus lead to more sales. This leads me to round up on the inventory numbers. Also we have an established team and a place to store excess inventory, both very good things. But perhaps there is some other extremely shiny thing that will drive traffic and dollars in a different direction. It seems like WorldCon Chicago is completely made of factors for which I should adjust the numbers. Mary will be there and the convention is writer heavy, so more WE stuff should go. Except Brandon will be at Dragon Con and Dan will be in Germany. Usually we have them sign at our booth, thus luring in new people. We have a fantastic team, but perhaps most of the WorldCon regulars have already bought their Schlock books. I turn all of these things over (and over and over) in my head before moving on to step 3.

Step 3: Make a guess

This is when I write down how much stuff I need to send. It really feels like stabbing in the dark, though I can be reasonably sure I’m in the right vicinity. If I send too much, I’ll have to pay for shipping both ways. If we run out of something, we’ll disappoint someone who wanted to buy.

Step 4: Ship the stuff and fret

All the time I’m packaging and shipping I will worry that I’m sending too much. I particularly worry this when I look at the shipping bill. Once I’ve sent it and during the booth set up process I am always convinced that I didn’t send enough. Sometimes I will oscillate between too much and not enough at a rate of 10 minutes per oscillation.

Step 5: The convention

Things sell. We pay the bills for the show. Usually we end up in the black. We make a huge mental list of what we should do differently next time. Sometimes I remember to write down the list or parts of it. Sometimes I even keep track of the notes and file them where I can find them next year.

Step 6: Post Convention accounting

This is when all of the stuff comes back home to me. In theory I conscientiously count everything and make copious notes. I’m also supposed to write up a post convention report which includes all those mental notes. The notes and reports go into a file neatly labelled for next year. All the convention gear should be neatly put away in places where I can find it again. Perhaps this year most of those things will happen because I’ll be staying home and thus not convention exhausted during this phase. In past years the boxes, reports, and gear get shoved out of the way as I scramble to recover and handle other things. Then a month or so later I finally get around to cleaning it all up, by which time some of the thoughts and pieces have been moved or lost. I do muddle through, I do at least shove the relevant information into file folders so I can find it the next year. I have folders full of GenCon papers for the past four years. I have WorldCon papers for a similar length of time. If I at least shove all the papers into a single location, I have a hope of making sense out of it later when I need to.

It always feels messy. I always feel like I’m doing it wrong. Yet I don’t think I am. I think the guessing and mess are part of the nature of the work. Which is why I write this blog post to let everyone know when I make jokes about casting the bones to guess how much to send to summer conventions, I’m only partially joking. Its how it feels.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Two Careers, One Marriage, and Self Doubt

This past weekend was the five day weekend of Writing Excuses podcast recording. Howard, Mary, Brandon, and Dan all shut themselves in Brandon’s basement for four days (with a one-day break in the middle) to attempt to record and entire year’s worth of episodes before Dan leaves to go live in Germany. I was not part of the recording. My efforts involved making sure that Howard had quiet spaces to depart from and return to when he was exhausted. And then there was the emotional support. This was hard on all of them, and therefore hard on their support systems. But the result is 44 episodes ready to go. They won’t record again for a year, which at the moment is relieving as they’re worn out, but later it will be a bit sad for me personally because Mary will not have a business-driven reason to come to town and Dan will be far away. These are people I like being around, hence sadness. At least the League of Utah Writers Round Up in September will give Brandon, Emily, Howard, and I a solid day to hang out and talk.

Writing Excuses is the one business thing where Howard is thoroughly involved and I am not. For most of our business ventures I’m in charge of operations, tracking schedules, sending inventory, accounting for both money and time. With Writing Excuses, I arrange nothing, plan nothing, am not involved. It is kind of nice, because I’ve got lots of things to track and don’t really need any more. However it is also a bit sad because the podcast is a truly worthwhile endeavor and I’d love to be part of that energy. I’m not though. I’m vitally important to Howard and a good friend to everyone else, but Writing Excuses exists entirely without my supportive efforts. I have no claims on it. On the days I feel a little sad, I have to remember that it is good for Howard to have professional spaces which do not include me. It is good for me to have professional spaces that do not include him. Our careers flourish best when they are unshackled from each other because we have very different professional focuses. The tricky bit is balancing those against our marriage in which we share all things. The other tricky bit is that whenever Howard and I are together the room is crowded with Husband, Wife, marketing directer, accountant, merchandiser, artist, art director, graphic designer, warehouse manager, customer support rep, and best friends. All these various roles have different relationships to each other, different authority structures. It gets quite complicated, particularly when we trade roles based on context. On the other hand, if all of those roles where filled by different people getting them all into a conference room and making them to agree with each other about priorities would be a monumental endeavor. There are also, of course, the times when Howard just hangs out with Sandra and all those other people are nowhere to be seen.

I think about all of this as I look at the list of things I need to do to prepare Howard for both GenCon and WorldCon. He will be running a booth at both conventions. I will be staying home, quite glad to shed the roles of booth manager, shop clerk, and talent handler. That particular trio of roles, when combined with parenting guilt for leaving the kids, has proven bad for me emotionally. I can do it. I will do it again as necessary, but this year we’ve lined up two different dream teams for the two events. Howard could not be in better hands. Now all I have to do is scramble hard to make sure that necessary preparation gets done in advance. Now if only I can find the appropriate business focus despite the heat and long summer days which play havoc with family schedule.

Come August Howard will go and I will stay. It would be nice to be able to say that I’ll stay behind and get writing done, that at least some of my summer will be spent working on things to build my career in my own space. Thus far that has not been true. My summer fishtails between family concerns and business tasks, skidding along, never quite out of control, but never feeling straight or steady. I have spaces, quiet times, but they’re used for things not-writing. Other than the League of Utah Writers event in September, I have no professional events currently scheduled. I hope to be involved with both LTUE and the Storymakers conference, but official invitations to present have not yet come and won’t until sometime in the fall. Right now my career is idling and part of me feels a bit pretentious for calling it a career at all. In theory careers pay money, which my writing only has in small sporadic amounts.

This points up another challenge, Howard’s career is a behemoth around which our family must constantly adjust. My career squeezes in around the edges. Howard and I talk about this sometimes. In our heads both careers have equal value. In the bank, his pays the bills. Granted, he would not have his career without all the work I do. That bill payment money is as much mine as his, but it is hard on the days when I realize that my real career, the one that makes money, is “business manager” while “writer” is actually a hobby. Then I have a whole argument with myself that the value of an effort should not be measured in dollars, which I feel strongly to be true. Yet bills don’t pay themselves and so work that pays bills is important and valued. Other work comes afterward. All of which explains why my writing continues to linger in the space and around the edges of everything else. I just have to confront this more when Howard disappears to record with three really cool people and I’m on the other side of the closed door.

We’ve taken steps to address the career imbalances. I’ve started giving myself royalty checks and statements for both Hold on to Your Horses and Cobble Stones. We try to send me on a career-related solo trip at least once per year. This year it was to the Nebula weekend. The thing is, I think that all relationships have similar imbalances, or could if the relationship is not carefully managed. It is easy to accidentally make one person seem more valued or important than the other. In our case, I’m guilty of doing it to myself. I give myself away without even noticing I’m doing it. Then every time I mark out territory for myself, a host of voices in my head tell me how that space could be better used. All I can do is keep plugging away, keep treating my writing like it is a career, and hope that some day I’ll have financial statements I can use to pummel the voices of self-doubt into submission.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

More Glow Sticks in the Dark

We took lots of shots of glow sticks swirled around in the dark. They were pretty easy to take. All I had to do was turn off the flash on my camera and hold it really still while Gleek swung the glow sticks around in various patterns. This was an over head under arm pattern she learned for swinging poi balls.

This one was two chains in a figure 8.

I grabbed this shot while she was paused to readjust something.

Again with two chains swung as eights.

Two chains in a tight circle.

It was a fun little art photography project that we really enjoyed.

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4th of July

While things-on-fire is the theme of the day, lots of fun can be had in lots of ways. This is Gleek playing night games with her glow stick ball.

Happy 4th of July!

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I Have a Library

Some dreams shine brightly right in front of our eyes. They are the big shiny possibilities which pull us forward and cause us to despair because they are so far beyond our reach. Other dreams are quiet. They exist in the backs of our brains and we pay them no attention until that moment when they either come true and bring us unexpected joy or become forever unavailable and bring us unforeseen grief. Quiet dreams matter. They are the difference between a joyful life and one spent in hollow pursuit of the shiny, unreachable dreams. This past year I’ve been working to identify and fulfill some of my quiet dreams. I started by giving myself permission to want things, even things I knew I’d never have. Then to my surprise, I found that many of the wants which emerged were very easy to fill, and once they were, they significantly added to my daily happiness. One of the quiet dreams that emerged was a desire for a library.

I’ve always had books in my life, lots of books. They lived more-or-less on shelves, though most of them spent significant amounts of time in stacks or piles. Some of the piles became semi-permanent installations in various corners of the house. They were like flotsam in the eddy of a flowing stream, places where books gathered because people set them down there. I made periodic attempts to clear out the piles as they became messy. I’d stack books on shelves two deep, because there weren’t enough shelves. Occasionally I would sigh to myself and wish for more shelves. Sometimes I would get desperate enough to buy an additional small book case and find a corner where I could shove it. Then it too would become home to stacks of books. Thus books accumulated in all the corners of our house and our lives.

When I stood in my office and pictured knocking out a wall, the world opened up with new possibilities. I could have guest space, a craft desk, and finally enough shelves to house all the books. It was the fulfillment of half a dozen quiet dreams, things I’d been doing with out for a very long time. The office was completed last May. I finally installed the shelves this week. I pulled the books from their boxes and placed them on the shelves. The shelves began to fill and something magic happened. I didn’t just have shelves of books, they transformed into a library. There was space to sort by size and type. I could put all the kid friendly books in easy child reach, while placing other books up high. All the anthologies could go together. This type of sorting was not possible with books stacked and piled all over the house. Then I remembered, I used to do this. As a child, I sorted my books. I’d learned about the dewey decimal system in school and tried to create a numbering system of my own. Some of my childhood favorites still have giant numbers scrawled inside the front covers or taped to the spines. For a while I used unicorn book plates.

The numbers were for the checkout system I had devised to track who had borrowed my books. I revised my system multiple times over the years as various systems fell apart. I’m not sure that anyone ever checked out a book from me, but the organizing and planning made me happy. Much of my discretionary money went into book purchases. I wanted to own every Black Stallion book. Even as a teenager I made list of books I wanted to own someday. I’ve been an amateur librarian all my life without realizing it. And now I have a library.

This makes me incredibly happy. Our book purchasing habits have changed. More of our books will be electronic than mass market paperback, but the hardbacks are going to continue to accumulate. My kids are acquiring manga at a frightening rate. Some of these books will be passed along to make space for new ones. But even though the contents of the library will evolve, I find it wonderful that we are able to set aside this small corner of my house and put books there first. The existence of this space declares that stories matter, that they deserve a space of their own. And there is a comfy couch right there so that people can sit down to read. It is a beautiful thing.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Summer of Fires

The other day my friend made an animated jpg purporting to illustrate where there are wild fires in Utah. It showed the entire state in flames, which is kind of how it feels. In the past week over a dozen large fires have burned forests and homes while requiring thousands of households to evacuate just in case. It seems that every single day brings report of a new fire. Nearby states are suffering the same or much worse. Colorado is suffering a fire of epic proportions. Yet at my house all is normal. I work on my projects, do my work, and the only direct effect of the fires is that sometimes the sunlight is red from smoke and yesterday we got a light coating of ash. Yesterday a friend told me that a couple of years ago the law was changed preventing people from gathering deadwood in national forests. He posited that this lead to a build up of underbrush. I suspect that much of this is caused by last year being so wet and mild while this year has been dry. Obviously something is different this year. We get one or two big fires every year, not more than ten in a single week.

Thus far I don’t know anyone whose home has burned, though I know several people who have been evacuated or were at risk of evacuation. I find myself thinking through the contents of our house and making a list of what I’d take if I could only remove one van load of combined things and people. There are lots of things in my house I’d miss if they were destroyed, but only a very few items that I would bother to pack. Most of the space would probably go to kid treasures. They love their things far more than I love mine. Mostly I would pack things that would let us continue to function as a business and a family while we were in exile.

Independence Day is next week. I’m not sure if I’m all that excited about lighting fireworks. I’ve kind of had enough of the smell of smoke.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

How To Raise a Strong Girl

Last week I saw several social media campaigns urging people to go see Brave on opening weekend. “Let’s show Hollywood that girl-led movies can make money!” they said, as if increasing the number of girl-led films would make the world a more fair place for women. I did see Brave during opening weekend, because Howard writes reviews and needs to see films early. I wanted to love it, but I didn’t because it managed to gut-punch me in my emotional baggage about motherhood roles.

Today I decided to spend my afternoon seeing Brave again. My kids had not yet seen it, and I wanted to re-view the film leaving my emotional baggage at home. I bought tickets and then set to work, before we could leave I had to make progress on my shelving project. I donned my work gloves and plugged in my borrowed electric sander. There is a sort of magic in watching a power tool turn a sharp wooden corner into a smooth round one. I glided the sander over the edges of the boards and dust blew away. I was careful to keep the sanding surface away from all my limbs and thought gratefully of my Grandpa who used to take me into his big garage and let me work on projects with him. With Grandpa, I soldered, repaired bikes, used a lathe, sawed wood, and hauled rocks. Grandpa let any grandchild was interested participate in the work; there was no distinction based on gender. Because of Grandpa, I am not afraid to pick up a power tool and make things even if I have never done so before. This shelving project is my first time using an electric sander.

Afternoon came and we all trekked to go see Brave. The kids loved it. They laughed out loud at exactly the slapstick moments which didn’t work well for Howard and me. I loved it too. I loved it as much as I wanted to love it the first time I saw it, but didn’t. The mother character, Eleanor, has to be rigid in order to provoke Merida into taking action. A more balanced representation of motherhood would have ruined the film. The scene where Eleanor quells the room full of brawling men is critical to a hero moment later in the film when Merida turns and faces down the woman who turned all those strong men into jelly. Yes it plays to a stereotype, but it allows that one moment which I think is the epitome of Brave, mother and daughter staring angrily into each other’s eyes because they have mutually exclusive plans for the future. I’m exceedingly pleased that the central conflict of Brave has nothing to do with romance or finding true love. If there is another girl-led animated film without a major romance component, I can’t think of it. In the car on the way home, I was thoughtful with tears pricking at my eyes, while the kids regaled each other with the antics of the comedy characters.

I’m glad I took my kids to see it, they now have a new princess story in their minds which is in many ways the antithesis of a class ic Disney-type film. But, if I were to weigh what I did today for gender equality, the most important thing I did was sand boards. My grandpa is not around to haul my kids (both boys and girls) into his garage to use power tools, but they can see that mom fixes stuff. For every movie where the girl character exists to scream, there is a time when I am fetched to slay spiders. For every movie with true love in it, they see a hundred days where mom and dad snap at each other grouchily and the laugh together later in the evening. For every movie where the dad helpless to manage the household, they have the days when Howard cleans the kitchen and makes dinner. Seeing a movie present a different perspective can be truly powerful, as when a young Whoopi Goldberg saw Nichelle Nichols on Star Trek and realized that black women could be on television without being maids. These powerful, pivotal moments in entertainment matter. Perhaps Brave is one of those moments and can change the world for some girls. But if I want to raise strong girls of my own, I just need to live as if the equality I hope for them already exists. I need to gift them with pocket knives, bows, arrows, hair ribbons, and nail polish as their interests warrant. My actions should say that of course they can be what they choose to be so long as they are willing to work hard to get there.

Life is not fair. It never will be. No movie can make it so. But strong girls can see the unfairness and do what they want to do anyway.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Shelving Project

In theory I can plan a home improvement project, do the math, make a list, and take a single trip to the store for supplies. So far my two-day-old shelving project has required one trip for boards and brackets, a second trip for screws and sandpaper, then a third trip to return sandpaper and buy sandpaper sheets large enough to fit the hand sander. A fourth trip will be necessary for additional boards and brackets, but at least now I can start work. Well, I can when it cools down outside. I don’t really want to deal with wood dust inside the house. Thus my morning project turns into an all day project. I console myself with the thought that once I am done my books will no longer have to live in boxes.

The second day of the project fares better than the first. I get up early to sand the edges of the boards and apply the first layer of stain. I only do two boards. They are proof of concept before I begin sanding a dozen more boards. They look nice sitting out on my deck rail drying. Hopefully they will continue to look nice when transported to my office. I’m really glad to finally have something visible for all the running around I did yesterday. Some days all my work vanishes so that I end the day wondering where the time went. Most of my summer work falls into this category. “Creating structure and schedule” is a crucial task around here, but success is invisible while failure is obvious. At least with the shelves there is something tangible.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Summer Lilac

This is a Summer Lilac. It is also known as Buddleia Davidii or Butterfly Bush, but I like the name Summer Lilac. It lets me imagine that I can hold on to spring time so long as the bush is in bloom, and this bush blooms all summer. We had one long ago, but it got torn out as part of our massive landscaping project back in 1999. I bought this one last Wednesday when I ventured into a garden center. I was there for basil plants, because Gleek had brought home a tiny basil sprout from a neighbor and lovingly planted it in our weed-filled garden bed. I knew the traumatized little sprout would not survive, so I went in quest of a larger basil plant for Gleek to tend. I came home with six plants and a wish list of a hundred or more. I need more time, more money, and more garden space. This summer lilac was one of the plants. It sits in a bucket on my back deck because I’ve not had a cool evening hour in which to plant yet. Tomorrow I’ll get it into the ground. It is a promise to myself that I’ll do more in my garden than just tame weeds. I want to be nurturing loveliness as well. The summer lilac will help me, because it will bring butterflies into my garden.

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Summer Chaos and Brave

I’m the first one awake most mornings. I’m the last one to bed at night. Since it is summer, those bedtimes are later than usual. I rarely get my younger two off to sleep before 10 pm. Later if it happens to be one of the nights when our cul de sac fills up with kids playing night games, which happens every other night. Some days I get a nap in the afternoon. Most days I don’t. Usually the days have long stretches of time when I can focus on work or projects. Yet randomly a quarrel will break out, and I am the one who has to drop everything I’m doing to go create peace again. None of this is so exhausting as it used to be. As they mature, my kids are more able to help themselves and solve their own problems. It is just that everyone is here all the time and we all depend upon me to create the structure of our lives. I do it because it is important, because I crave the order as much as anyone else. This balance we’ve arrived at does seem to be the best solution currently available given the constraints of summer schedule and business requirements.

All of the above is what I took with me when I went to see the movie Brave. I wanted to love the movie, instead I only liked it because it prodded me right in my emotional baggage. You see, I want to be Merida, wild and free. I want to jump on the back of my horse and gallop through the forest shooting arrows and climbing waterfalls. I even want that glorious, untameable red hair. Instead I am Eleanor, the mother, the one who quells the fun and imposes order. I was very frustrated that Eleanor kept imposing princess behavior on Merida which seemed completely unvalued by anyone else in the society. It is one thing for a mother to insist her child learn something because it will definitely benefit the child later. This just seemed pointless. The movie was telling me that it is the job of adult women to impose civilization. “You must be Eleanor.” The movie seemed to say to me. “Be the embodiment of constraint.”

In after thought, I remember that there were portions of the movie where Eleanor also seemed trapped by her own expectations. At the end of the film Eleanor also gets to ride a horse. Lessons are learned all around, I suppose.

Each day I see all the things that are necessary. I see why they are necessary. I see how things must be done in order to achieve long term growth and goals. But the practical application of all of that leaves me being the one to impose order and structure on chaos and requiring others to help me. Part of me loves doing these things. I like order and calmness. I like my hair smooth while I create something of beauty with a needle and thread. Yet I also want to run through the woods with leaves caught in my wild hair. I think I need to see Brave again and view it while considering Merida and Eleanor as two possible aspects rather than feeling I must be one or the other.

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