| (no subject) |
[May. 25th, 2012|02:43 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  sick | ] |
Okay, so I've been silent, but I have an excuse. What with the little man running around the apartment now, he doesn't stay in one room for more than two minutes on average, which means it's nigh-impossible for me to sit and focus on something. Occasionally I have to corral (sp?) him so I can sit for a few minutes and rest.
Anyway, I probably have a ton to say, but I can't remember it all. The exhaustion on top of the heat on top of being sick is making it hard to think.
Oh, I should get this out of the way - if you're a MLP:FiM fan, please pass the word along about my "Team Derpy" t-shirt. I haven't gotten ANY preorders for this thing yet, and I really want to see it become a reality. Here's the link - http://www.bardsworth.com/?p=826. Help is mucho appreciado.
Chugging along on edits for "Blood of the Mother". I really thought the last round would have been it, but I was wrong. THIS should be the last time, and if it's not... well, too bad, I'm publishing it. I need to move onto a new project.
Okay, my brain is shutting down again. I'll have something more substantial to say next time, I promise. Maybe. |
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| Team Derpy |
[May. 17th, 2012|04:22 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  bouncy | ] |
If you're a brony/pegasister, you might want to check out the new t-shirt design I opened preorders for (click on the image to go to the preorder page).
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| The Maryland Faerie Festival |
[May. 15th, 2012|03:52 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  determined | ] |
This past weekend was the Maryland Faerie Festival, and it was the second year I attended as a vendor. Last year I went without Katie, as Gareth had just been born the previous month (although I was accompanied by the lovely ladies Sarah and Jenn). Even though it had been a failure financially, it was a great experience and I thought that perhaps we'd do better this year with a spot of good weather and some new products. Unfortunately, it wasn't to be.
Leading up to the event, Katie and I spent some long nights preparing, bottling, and labeling our new bath products, as well as finishing up a ton of wearable fairy wings. We also went armed with Glamourkins made by Sarah and Jenn with our artwork, and two Bardsworth scents made by Rhi. All this in addition to our usual fare. So we had quite a lot to offer.
Friday was mostly a set-up day. We made one sale, but mostly sat around. Saturday was our big sale day, as expected, but it didn't pan out to be quite as good as we had hoped. There was barely any interest in the bath products (which we thought would gain more interest once we moved the samples to the very front), and only a passing interest in the Glamourkins. Sunday was the most depressing because unlike Friday there were a number of people there, but just like Friday nothing sold (well, I DID sell a Bardsworth book to a young man who was very interested in the comic). So, like the previous year, we did not do as financially well as we had expected or hoped.
We do, however, have a much better story than the infamous tent pole story from last year (which, if you haven't heard, search one year back in my LJ archive). When we set up our tent for outdoor festivals, we usually have four buckets filled with sand to weigh the tent down. These buckets are currently being stored at my parents' house, and because of that we totally forgot to bring them. It was only a mild concern on Friday because while there were breezes, they weren't overly strong. Until about ten minutes before we were planning on cleaning up. A gust came out of nowhere and Katie's mermaid painting fell down for the hundredth time, so I rushed over to pick it back up. As I did that, I watched in horror as the front of our tent pulled up from the ground (it had been staked down with smaller stakes). Our shelves with our bath products was in the back tied to a support pole to keep the shelves from falling forward; unfortunately, this also had the effect of pulling the shelves backwards as the tent began to fall over. Katie tried desperately to hold the shelves in place, but it was no good. The tent flipped over onto its side, and one of the legs grazed the tables that had all of our loose merchandise, scattering it all over the ground. It was a surreal moment, and all I could think was, "This is not happening... this is not happening..."
In a true testament to the goodwill of the people at the festival, though, all of the nearby vendors ran to our rescue and helped us to pull the tent back up, pick up our merchandise from the ground, and one guy (Danny) brought over two extra heavy duty "railroad spike" stakes to stake down the front of our tent. One woman even took a moment to make sure Katie calmed down (she could apparently read auras and said that Katie was "leaking energy"). And in a stroke of good fortune, none of the bath product bottles broke. So in the end, all we could do was laugh and joke about the experience. But it didn't mean that we didn't jump every time there was a breeze on Saturday and Sunday.
Needless to say, Katie and I were depressed after all was said and done. But we had a long discussion about how to move forward and what we should be doing differently. Firstly, we won't be doing anymore outdoor festivals (unless we somehow manage to get into Spoutwood) until we are financially stable enough to take a hit. Secondly, we will be focusing all of our efforts into our online store. Thirdly, we won't be producing much new product until we've sold a good portion of what we have sitting around.
I keep telling myself it was a risk and when you're running your own business you have to take risks. If we hadn't gone, we would have kept asking ourselves, "What if we had done really well there?" But now that we've taken that risk (and several other similar ones over the past few years), we know better. We just have to keep marching forward.
Anyway, thank you to everyone who wished us luck, sent positive energy our way, and supported us. It just wasn't meant to be. |
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| Sleep is for the weak and ZZZZZZZ... |
[May. 8th, 2012|12:58 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  busy | ] |
Holy crap, this has been a whirlwind week. I usually work hard before a con, but preparing for this festival has been beyond crazy. We're debuting all sorts of different things, so I've been cranking out labels for all kinds of bath products, sealing bottles, spraying sealant on fairy wings, putting together a second book of sketches, and trying to keep the apartment semi-clean. Oh yeah, and the whole watching a one-year-old thing. Doesn't help that he doesn't want to sleep, so we don't get to sleep, so we're doing all of this in a haze helped only slightly by vast amounts of coffee.
But we're in the homestretch. Another day or two, and anything we don't finish we just have dust off our hands and say, "Oh well." We've got more than double the amount of stuff that I took last year, and such a wide variety of it, too. I'm confident we're going to do really well.
On top of all that I found out that I'm going to ConnectiCon because I'm getting a free table. Apparently the guy in charge of the Online Media Hall was supposed to contact me to tell me that, but didn't. And it's a BOOTH space this year, not just a table. So I can take all of our new stuff with me (whatever might actually be left over, that is). The only sad part is that my brother and our usual crew won't be joining me this year, and some other people I was looking forward to seeing aren't going. Soooo... if any of you geeks wants to meet me there and help out in exchange for a free badge (just have to help out with hotel costs) let me know. :-)
The downside to all of this is that I really haven't been able to work on my writing at all. I had a night last week where I was FILLED with ideas for the next Rick Walker book (and had to write the first several paragraphs otherwise I would have 'sploded), so I want to get Blood of the Mother done and out of my hair ASAP.
Okay, I'm going to take a break from the computer now and play with my boy. He looks like he needs to be tickled. |
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| Beards Can Be Fun |
[Apr. 27th, 2012|11:12 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  tired | ] |
I'm alive, though you probably wouldn't know it to look at me. It's been a rough few weeks with very little sleep due to a teething boy and attempting to be productive in the evenings. But I'm surviving.
I suppose I should say something nice about the boy other than "he keeps us awake". I feel like I don't talk about him much. So I'll share one of the newer things that I love. When I'm holding him and trying to get him to go to sleep, he occasionally reaches up and grabs at my goatee. I started tickling his hand with it when he does this, and he just gets this huge sleepy grin on his face that makes me start chuckling, and then he starts laughing all sleepy-like. I like to think that it helps put him to sleep in a good mood. Even if it doesn't, though, it's our new special thing.
Edits on Blood of the Mother isn't moving along as quickly as I'd like, but it is moving. I really hope to have it done soon. I want to be able to move onto the next project.
I had some other things I was going to write about, but my brain is pretty much dead at this point. |
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| PONIES |
[Apr. 24th, 2012|03:00 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  cheerful | ] |
RHI I LOVE YOU
RACHEL I LOVE YOU
PONIES I LOVE YOU
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| Fighting the Blues |
[Apr. 13th, 2012|04:51 pm] |
I've gone back and forth on what to write in this post. I've been having a rough week, mostly from lack of sleep due to a teething Mr. Gareth. But I've also been having one of those weeks where I'm feeling a lot of negative emotions for seemingly no reason at all. I don't know if it's BECAUSE of the lack of sleep or if I'm just susceptible to it for another reason. Instead of throwing myself a pity party, though, I've been trying to bury myself in work. Because of that, I've been able to pump out some pretty damn good artwork for my book cover (check it out on my author page on Facebook). The book itself will need another round of edits (done by Katie) and polishing before I can consider releasing it. I'd love to give myself a deadline, but with the boy setting the schedule it's tough to do that. So I'll say within the next two months it should be out. Give or take a year.
Katie and I have been trying to get things ready for the MD Faerie Festival, and like I predicted it's going slower than we'd like. We were set back a week due to Katie being ill, and our lack of sleep hasn't helped much this week. We have a good number of cellophane wings almost completed, though, and Katie is working a larger set of wings. I was supposed to have made soap for the first time this past weekend, but apparently because of people making meth with it, lye is not available anywhere in the Rochester area. So we won't have it ready for the festival, but I still plan on making it soon (perhaps some geek-themed soaps for ConnectiCon).
And this weekend is the boy's one year birthday! Is it really possible that it was a year ago that he was born? It's crazy. Anyway, he's having a heck of a party being thrown for him on Sunday and I'm sure there'll be pics. :-) |
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| My Dark Secret |
[Apr. 5th, 2012|05:31 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  anxious | ] |
I have a dark secret that I'm willing to share with you. Some of you may not like it. Some of you may turn away from me in disgust. Katie all but did so when I told her. But they say confession is good for the soul.
( My confession: ) |
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| A Little Of This, A Little Of That |
[Mar. 29th, 2012|03:49 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | chipper | ] |
As usual, things have been pretty busy. Katie and I have been diving into our preparations for the Maryland Faerie Festival - getting frames ready for wings, discussing bath and body products (and ordering sample bottles/containers), and I've been reading up on soap making. I'm actually pretty excited about making soap; it seems that, in a way, it's pretty similar to making beer. I'll be trying my first few batches next weekend.
And speaking of beer, I'll (hopefully) be doing my next brew on Sunday. It was going to be Saturday, but I had a hiccup regarding the yeast (the packet I've been holding onto is past its usefulness). I'm doing an IPA (India Pale Ale), so if anyone is interested in trying it let me know and I'll save you a bottle or two.
In writing news, I finished my edits for my work-in-progress (tentatively titled "Faith of the Chosen"), and Katie has taken red pen to it. In the meantime, I just sketched out a cover idea and plan to do a few more. Also I'm cleaning out and updating my story bible (a binder with my notes). With the finish of the first book, I have to start preparing for the next two.
In my downtime (HA!) I've been reading the last book in the Hyperion Cantos, Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons. I know I've talked about these books before, but honestly, if you've never read Hyperion or the sequels, do yourself a favor and do so. They are amazing works of not only science fiction, but literature. I've also been playing Star Trek Online, although I'm still not past the tutorial so there hasn't been much online playing.
And, as I suspected, there's the boy waking up from his nap. |
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| What Is My Problem? |
[Mar. 25th, 2012|10:22 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  gloomy | ] |
I'm not entirely sure what to write because I'm not entirely sure what's going on inside my head. I'm sort of in a dark place at the moment and I don't want to be there, but I'm not entirely sure why I'm there. I don't know if I'm still just depressed because I didn't get the freelance transcribing job I tested for, or if it's a lot of little things piling up in my head, or if I'm just PMSing (it happens to me sometimes, no joke).
I should be happy and energetic. Katie and I had a business discussion on Friday about all the things we need to do for the Maryland Faerie Festival, and even though it's a lot, it's exciting stuff. I'm learning about soap making so I can contribute to our bath and body products line, and it's pretty cool stuff. I need to be in a better place to be prepared for all of that, though.
I hope I can figure out what my problem is. It's not fair for Katie and Gareth to have to put up my sullenness and grumpiness. |
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