Monday, March 17, 2008

Moved, sort of

Well, after much lifting and hauling and shoving and tossing and grunting and straining, the gadzillion piles of papers and books have been thrown into boxes and transported to what used to be our new (unfinished)bedroom/studio/junk collection spot. Monique Musick, Raz, and Mayor Hannah, along with Wayward Truck Collector Scott Allen and Noble Spousal Unit Hans, and myself, did some seriously heavy lifting and got everything into the New Office and Shipping Room in our house. Whew. I managed to create a nifty little office with desk and computer (no Internet access, though--I'm writing this from the local cybersaloon) and a shipping table and storage for books, papers, and packing materials. There's actually still leftover room for a studio/sitting area.

It's still full of boxes and piles of art papers and curious cats all over the place (they REALLY like it that I'm hanging out in the house all day), but I'm sorting and chucking leftover crap and filing and whatnot, so the space is getting more manageable. I was actually able to work today, filling orders and entering data and (gack) paying bills. The Ponzi scheme I've been running (otherwise known as yer normal publishing biz) is catching up with me. Thank god some of my debtors are paying up. I sent off the rest of the money owed on Nuggets, plus the check for the March Republic. It's just amazing how fast the money flies out. But I do have a few cool books coming in to show for my effort.

Today Jorgy and Jean Lester and I had lunch and went over our contract, and a whole passel of folks stopped by our table to say hi. It was great. One of them, a Mr. Hupprich, was carrying around a copy of Like A Tree to the Soil, and he was able to identify the kids in the Potato Club photo from 1937 (he was one of them). I was delighted to be able to point to the book and say, "I did that, I designed it." And took it from manuscript to book. Made me feel pleased and proud, like I'd done something that meant something to people, that was worthwhile.

I just LOVE things like that.

3 comments:

Alaskan Dave Down Under said...

How would I go about getting a copy of the Nuggets books??? Where can I mail order?

You could have probably guessed that I'm a fan of that kind of humour :)

Deirdre Helfferich said...

No surprise there. I can't afford to sell them on Amazon (they're a bookstore, but they act like a distributor, which is hard on a small publisher), but you can order directly from the publisher. I'm going to have credit card accessibility soon, I hope (like, this month), so I should be able to take your money by early April. Not sure what shipping to Australia would be. I'll have to come up with international rates...

Alaskan Dave Down Under said...

Very cool, thanks!