A Literary Life, Renewed

In my previous post, I mentioned some stuff about organization, time management, and prioritization. That effort has borne much delicious fruit, albeit slowly. But the slowness is rather the point, because as I touch every single goal and priority and task and calendar on my desk, I've been thinking more carefully about what really matters and have found that I've needed to make very tough choices about what I remove from my plate, and how I otherwise structure my week, to ensure I enjoy actual working time to accompany my good intentions.

It's also reminded me that I love writing and editing and publishing, but I haven't prioritized these well – not since the early days of Caffeinated Press. The gap between "I wanna do this" and "I have the time to do this" was wider than I had expected, after I put some time estimates into my to-do list. So if I want to be a "literary person" I probably need to put in the work. Right? So here we go.

Reading

Not only did I solidify an aggressive 10-year reading program, but I augmented it with a two-year nonfiction survey reading program in the arts, sciences, and humanities.

Starting in August, I'm hard-blocking every Sunday afternoon for an extended reading session, in addition to whatever I can fit in before bed any other night of the week.

Writing

I've been working slowly through Memoirs of a Literary Nobody since last November. I'm about a third of the way done, with the Grand River Writing Tribe critiquing chapters as I go. And I've created the framework for the fourth Jordan Sanders detective novel — an idea that has prompted me to substantially revise the three that preceded it, and in a shocking twist, I'm actually eager to do so.

To ensure I have at least some protected writing time, starting on August 6 I'm blocking 4p to 7p at the office for quiet writing time. And I'm opening this door to everyone to attend — provided that silence is enforced and you don't mind being in the conference room with the cats and snakes. The bookstore is not open during this time, but I agreed to be on-site backup for the dojo on Thursday nights, so since I have to be there anyway, I may as well invite others to join me!

Selling

Jason's Books and Coffee — which has been closed since late June — officially reopens on Wednesday, August 5, at 1 p.m.

I've been closed for "inventory." Which is code for "figuring WTF I'm doing with all of these books." I originally planned to use one well-regarded vendor as an inventory and POS platform, but that vendor is so swamped that I literally could not get on their deployment calendar (or even get most messages returned) so I changed solutions. The new vendor is interesting in the sense that everything about it screams "Windows 3.1" but it'll get the job done. The biggest barrier with this vendor was actually label printing: The application supports printing book labels but after two weeks and probably 20 cumulative hours of messing with it, I finally emailed support, and support basically said that no one uses labels and they stopped supporting the vendor most commonly associated with label printing. So, I had to invent a work-around.

But the upshot is that starting on August 5, our hours are permanently changed to Wed/Fri 1p to 9p and Thu/Sat 9a to 1p. We will be closed on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. The new system will allow a credit system for books and much more sophisticated "want" lists for customers.

Oh, and my entire inventory will also be uploaded and synced with Amazon, eBay, Biblio, and a few other tools. Multichannel FTW!

Publishing

I've been on hiatus from publishing for a few years now. That is changing. I'm re-launching The Lakeshore Review as a triannual literary journal in August. I will also be opening the door to an anthology project in August. Still on the fence about publishing books again and will probably defer that question until 2027.

Convening

Next week, I head off to GenCon in Indianapolis. GenCon hosts the annual Writers' Symposium, which draws nearly 30,000 attendees as part of the larger 100k+ attendance of GenCon. I'm moderating and presenting at one panel and co-hosting another panel (so far), under the color of being the 2025-2027 president of the Midwest Independent Publishers Association. And MiPA has been invited by the GCWS leadership team to explicitly promote networking among attendees. I'm looking forward to the opportunity!

In Other News

The last few months have been a whirlwind. Some tidbits of note:

• Cade and I made a return visit to the annual Lantern Festival at John Ball Zoo – and this time, the air was warmer and darker. Very different experience.
• Bolt was gelded. He got a lot smarter after that.
• I attended the 36th annual Midwest Book Awards and served as primary emcee of the event, in my capacity as president of the Midwest Independent Publishers Association. It went well, and our host (St. Catherine University in St. Paul, MN) was again top-notch. Plus, Allison and I attended Mass at the Cathedral of St. Paul before we left town — it was absolutely gorgeous.
• Cade rode Macey a bit, using a bareback pad. She is presently going through the paces with an experienced trainer so we know what her "buttons" are. My fancy leather saddle (the one I restored, from a tack sale) doesn't fit Miss Wide Quarterhorse but it appears to fit Tyr like a glove, which makes me happy. The barn owner has graciously allowed me to use one of his wide-tree FQHB saddles for Macey until I can get my own for her.
• I supported Cade as he introduced some ambassador animals to a children's day camp. We brought two snakes, a quail, a gecko, a rat, and a mouse.
• Cade's ginormous senior cat Kitty managed to go into spontaneous remission for his feline diabetes. Rare, but it happens. Yay kitty!
• I drove the truck in the Kentwood Independence Day parade, on behalf of the dojo.
• Cade and I attended BreyerFest at Kentucky Horse Park, near Lexington. We stayed at our favorite B&B and we made a return trip to our favorite "craft pizza and beer" tavern downtown, too. BreyerFest was interesting. I expected the equivalent of a Holiday Inn conference room filled with plastic horses. Instead, the arena was running continuously with demonstrations and shows, and Cade even got to meet the real-life horse that was the inspiration for a new Breyer model. I wasn't expecting a bad experience, but I found it to be more fun and interesting than I had anticipated.
• We got a goat. His name is Cheese Curd. Cade saw him in the auction barn at Berlin Fair and fell in love. (Curdie does act like a sweet puppy.) Anyway, the goat happened to be the grand champion. Cade's mom was our agent while we were in Kentucky and Cade won the bid! And the sweet 11-year-old boy who raised this goat was literally thrilled to tears when he learned his beloved goat was going to be a pet and not go "on the trailer" to come back in paper-wrapped chunks. And Cade's mom was so enraptured by the whole experience that she ended up adopting Curdie's brother, Bounce, on her own.
• For Cade's birthday, we went to the zoo, where my beloved enjoyed an up-close-and-personal experience with the meerkats (a Top 5 favorite animal!) through the glassed part of their enclosure. Plus we saw Agnes the penguin; she had jumped up with Cade during a "feed the penguins" encounter I got as a Valentine's Day gift a few years ago.

Whew.

And to think, we're only half-done with summer.