Mohawk Dog On The Loose

I usually stay upstairs in my office and work when contractors are here during the day (when they're not here I lay around on the couch and eat bon-bon's --ha ha!  Kidding, honey!).  So I'm upstairs this morning when I hear Tile Guy call my name:

"Dena? Do you know your neighbor's dogs?"

"What?" I ask.  I tromp down the stairs and find Tile guy holding the world's cutest dog. Well, okay, maybe not the cutest, but very adorable nonetheless.  Sort of a fuzzy white with a bit of a mohawk look on top.  He had on a blue cloth collar and was hanging out in Tile Guy's arms as though he was born to be there. Just being rocked like a baby, head back, checking out the hallway.

"Who are you?" I cooed, coming closer.  Mohawk Dog gave my nose several friendly licks.

"I saw him running around and called him over," said Tile Guy.  "Do you know who he belongs to?"

I didn't, but I slipped on my shoes and Tile Guy handed me Mohawk Dog to take around to my neighbors to see if they knew who he belonged to. Mohawk Dog hung out in my arms and seemed very pleased to be carried about in such a glorified fashion.

My neighbor Margerite was home. "Oh, he belongs to that house one street up with the big fenced in yard," she told me.  "He gets free a lot."

Fenced in yard,  one street up.   Check.  I start walking. Mohawk dog is getting heavier.  I'd guess he weighs maybe 15  pounds. I decided to chance putting him down, just becasue he was obviously such a good-tempered and trained dog.  I figured he'd follow me.

And if you call walking a good 10 feet in front of me as following me, then yes, follow me he did.  He moved out of the street when cars passed (thank God), and finally we got to the fenced in yard.  Where--guess what!--a medium sized yellow dog already stood.

Yellow dog seemed anxious to see Mohawk Dog and gave several  high leaps, trying to mount the fence. Luckily nothing came of that. I decided to knock on a few doors before putting Mohawk Dog in the yard with Yellow dog.  I  must have knocked on 5-6 doors, and got only 1 answer.  A very nice elderly couple who informed my dog was in fact, "Ed's Dog--you know, Ed on Decauter? That's his dog. Just let him run free and he'll go home."

Okay great, thanks for the help.  Moving on, now.  I knocked on a few more doors--nothing.  I walked back to fenced in yellow dog and looked doubtfully down at Mohawk Dog. "Are you guys friends?" I asked.  I picked up Mohawk Dog and held him near the top of the fence.  The two dogs nosed each other, which I took to be a good sign. HOWEVER, as I began to  lower Mohawk Dog down the other side of the fence, he began wriggling and growling and nipped at my finger.  Nipped in the nicest way--his teeth actually got one of my fingers and he didn't bite down (and he could have), but he applied pressure to let me know this was not how he wanted the situation to develop.

Images of me putting this poor dog in the wrong yard with the wrong dog flashed through my mind.  What if Yellow dog ate Mohawk dog?  Once he was in, he was in. I wouldn't be able to get at him.  So I put Mohawk Dog back on the ground at my feet.

"Fine," I said.  "You win. Come with me." My plan was to go back to Margerites and get a leash and maybe keep Mohawk Dog in my yard until later tonight when people would be home.

But Mohawk dog had had enough of me.  He ran up and down the street and in and out of yards and came to me a few times, but eventually darted off on his on.  All in all, I probably spent 40 minutes with this dog. And I have no idea if he made it home.

I suspect he does belong with Yellow Dog and will probably hang out in the area and find his way home.  I just wish people would be more careful with their dogs. And that there was a way to match a dog with a home.  Like maybe we can all keep pictures of our pets out on our front porch.

I think I'll do life-size blow-ups of my cats. 

England/Scotland Trip - Can't Wait

The prospect of our upcoming trip to England/Scotland has me chomping at the bit.  It's given me back some perspective that there is more going on in the world outside the narrow confines of my daily interests.  Our last extended vacation was three years ago to Hawaii.  That's just far too long a period to stick around rural NC <grin>.

I curled up last night in bed with my 2006 Fodor's guide to Great Britain. With a pencil I checkmarked all the sites I want to see. Right.  Cancel the two weeks and make it two months.  Do I want to see castles? Yes. Stately homes? Yes. Pubs? Good God, yes. Hiking/Walking trails? Yes. Moors and cliffs? Yes. English gardens? Yes.

The wonderful thing about Blair is that we are a perfectly matched traveling pair. We move at the speed of light, racing from ancient ruin to ancient ruin, but never feeling rushed. We're both up before dawn and are typically the first people in line for the opening of any site.  Did you know, when we went to Paris years ago we were at the gates of the Eiffel Tower right as it opened and we were the only ones there? So we climbed the Eiffel alone--a very cool thing.

We also get hungry on the same schedule and neither of us are much for the nightlife, preferring to knock ourselves out during the day with sites, than to bed early to study the itinerary for the next day.  

The only major travel difference I say we have is that I like to stop and sit at little cafes, which I think Blair doesn't enjoy as much.  France was just filled with little bistros and sidewalk cafes, begging you to stop and enjoy a coffee and pastry. And England with its tea and scones is going to keep me very busy.

We're going to start looking at hotels and B&B's on the web, figuring out where to stay. I prefer to stay in a central area and drive everywhere.  Not so wild about having to pack and unpack multiple times during a trip. I'm hoping for this trip we'll get by with no more than 3 different hotel stays.

I must say, as I sit at my desk working, if it becomes too much, it's lovely to glance up and out the window and just remember that in a couple of months, I'll be roaming moors and hills in Scotland, stuffed on scones.

Minutia

I am feeling constantly like I'm working, working, working, but nothing is getting done.

"Explain this to me," Blair said last night. "Give me an example."

Here's what I told him: On Thursday, I received an e-mail from a Colorado bookstore employee--one of the stores who had requested a review copy of Lessons In Stalking through the BookSense program.  The person actually nominated my book for the BookSense award, which was immensely gratifying. They also wrote Spotlight Publishing to ask if they could order a copy of the book through a distributor.

And so it began.  I don't have a distributor.  I e-mailed my friend who is going to start working on behalf of Spotlight Publishing to land us a distributor.  "What should I say," I asked.  He e-mailed back, asking if I'd like him to correspond with the bookstore.  Well, wouldn't that be weird, I e-mailed back.  I had mailed the book to the store with a cover letter from Dena Harris (vs. Spotlight Publishing). So to suddenly have a new person come in might seem odd, yes? We e-mail a few more comments back and forth and now we're up to about 30 minutes worth of time.

Finally, I e-mail the bookstore to say we're a new, small press operating as our own distributor but I would be happy to send them out copies of the book.

The bookstore responds by asking what our shipping costs are. They would probably only order 2 copies and if our shipping costs are too high, it might not be worth it for them.  And to let them know if/when Spotlight gets a distributor.

I forward this e-mail to my friend. He e-mails back, asking if I have a price schedule as set out in Dan Poynter's book on self-publishing that I've been following since this book publishing adventure again.  Price schedule? Huh? So I drop everything and flip through Dan's book, finally finding what I need.

But this is new to me.  So far, the stores I'm dealing with are on consignment. Which means I give them the book and they pay me when they sell one.  Bookstores buy books outright, usually at a 40-55% discount.  BUT, they are also allowed to return any unsold books.  So there's just a whole slew of paperwork and documentation that needs to take place.  I start to get a headache.

I e-mail my friend a sample price schedule for review but ask if it wouldn't just be easier to charge a 40% discount across the board? Yes, it may be more encouraging to say 25% discount for purchase of 1-5 books, and 30% discount for purchase of 6-10, etc.  But that just seems a bigger headache.  So a few e-mails go back and forth on that.

Finally, I decide to go with stacked price schedule.  I e-mail the bookstore with the schedule and say I'll handle the shipping charges.  (It's more important to me my book gets out than to hassle about $4 for shipping).  I ask if they'd like to order copies and that's where it stands now.

So we're up to almost 2 hours spent now on this one task.  Not a consecutive block of time, but still--it's time consuming and take note of what got accomplished: an e-mail was sent.

 That's how the majority of my day goes.  I'm digging through all these minute details and falling farther behind. So I finishing relaying this to Blair. He looks at me and says, "You need to prioritize. In the big picture, what was this? The sale of two books. Way too much time was spent on this."

And I agree.  But my argument was that yes, this was a lot of effort to respond to one e-mail but the effects are more far reaching than that.  The price schedule I sent to this bookstore was going to have to be the schedule I stick to for ALL stores. Also, this distributor issue is going to come up with any bookstore that contacts me.  So I didn't feel I was doing it all for one e-mail, but rather to start to get a grip on future transactions.

I did identify a few key areas.  One: I need to move past my phone phobia.  I hate talking on the phone.  I hate it, hate it, hate it.  Given the choice, I'll always use e-mail.  But that's not time effective.  My 1 hour of e-mails back and forth with my friend could have been handled with a 10-minute phone call.  I do that with a lot of work.  Instead of calling and moving it off my plate, I e-mail and am stuck waiting for a response.  So that's one thing to work on.

The other is to not be such a perfectionist.  I want everything in my life and my publishing business to be in a straight row,  lined up, with clearly defined rules for engagement and a handy checklist to make sure things get done. Life isn't like that.  And I know that. But I keep trying to make MY life like that and getting frustrated when it doesn't happen. 

Of course, that's asking to change a lifelong pattern of operation.  It won't happen overnight.  Small steps.  Like using the phone.  And moving away from e-mail.  I have a writer friend who checks her e-mail once a day.  If it's not in her inbox at check time, it gets left until tomorrow. 

I admire the spirit.

Bookstore Diva

Back before my book was published, I dreamed of walking into a big chain bookstore and finding my book on the shelf.  And even though Lessons In Stalking has been at the Greensboro Borders for months now, I've never made the time to walk in and see it.  So today, when my friend Bernie suggested we pop into Borders, I eagerly said yes, ready to make the dream come true.

Entering the store, I wasn't sure where my book was.  I scanned the humor section and didn't see it there.  Then I saw a section that said "CATS."  Yeah, that would be me.  And sure enough, there were my 4 books, three rows from the bottom.

I immediately did what any good author would do, and that is to turn my books so the cover faced out (vs. just the spine).   That was a mistake as the shelves don't meet the back wall of the bookcase so my 4 thin books went tumbling down three rows of shelves to the floor. 

I fished them out and tried again. This time, I just placed one book facing out, leaning it against my other books.  I stood back to observe my handiwork.  Better.

I wandered over to the travel section and picked up a Fodor's guide to Great Britain. Walking back, I saw a staff member had already refiled my book so only the spine was showing.  Damn, those Border's employees are good.

So I left it.  Honestly, the experience was a bit of a dud.  It wasn't the spine-tingling thrill I thought it would be.  It was more like, "Yup, that's my book.  Looks just like the 2,000 I still have at home."  

What's been more fun is I've been visiting some local boutiques, leaving a review copy of my book.  I'm hoping Rag Poets and the Painted Daisy will both agree to carry my work.  I dropped my book off at Rag Poets on Wednesday, and came back on Thursday to return something and the young woman working the counter said, "Sharon and I were reading this book yesterday and just howling. You're hysterical."  

That's encouraging.