I've not been too happy with 2009 so far. This is how my year thus far has gone:

1. My hours at work were drastically cut.

2. My maintenance fees went up. A lot. (Anybody seeing a problem here?)

3. I did not finish my book when I thought I would. In fact, I have still not finished it. I find this unbearably depressing.

4. I got the swine flu.

5. It's not just that I got the flu, it's when I got it. A lot of the reason for #3 is that, just as I was on verge of pulling it all together, Borders decided that the store needed to be completely re-arranged. 2600 sq. ft. of books. I got to be lead on this project because it's my kind of thing. This lead to my working virtually full-time, which was a help with numbers 1&2, but made it impossible for me to get much written.

But look on the bright side, right? I'm organizing the kind of project I love and I have got it all under control and at least I will not have to declare bankruptcy.

Only then I get the swine flu and have to abrogate responsibility for my pet project. Plus I am no longer earning any money, thus enabling numbers 1&2 to raise their ugly heads again.

So now I have no money, I have no book, and I have a sinus headache. I want a do-over!

Update 23 June 2009:

I now have a number 6 (oh, joy ).

6. Someone backed into my car.

I've just finished the third book in Lisa Lutz's wonderful mystery series. I laughed out loud through all three, and much admired the unusual structure of the books. I just wanted to post a quick recommendation here, because I really, really enjoyed them and am looking forward to book 4!

That would be Jove (imprint of Berkley, owned by Penguin), who recently published Amanda Quick's latest mass market (The Third Circle). As opposed to Pocket Star (Kensington), who have just reprinted three of John Connolly's backlist titles.

Quick's book is a new paperback release, and Jove has elected to issue it in the new, larger format, priced at 9.99. This format has become increasingly popular among mystery/thriller publishers, but the romance people have thus far eschewed it, so Quick's book stands out. The problem is that in this economic climate, nobody wants to pay $2 more for a mass market book. So, yes, Jove is reaping an extra $1.20 per book sold, but I work at a bookstore in a hard-hit area of the country, and from my point of view the extra $1.20 is not making up for the sales they're losing.

I sell a lot of romance at my store, and Amanda Quick is a popular author. I've never seen one of her titles move so slowly. I've actually overheard customers say, "Oh, wait, why is this more than the others?" and put the book back. And, as I mentioned, The Third Circle is new in paperback--at my store, a great many of the romance customers wait until the paperback comes out before they buy, so the new ones usually go very quickly.

The three John Connolly titles, on the other hand, are not new--they're reprints of older books, and they're priced at $4.99. I really only put them out on the new book table because I was a bit low on titles, and normally I wouldn't have expected them to sell very well. But lo and behold, they flew off the table. I had only put out one of the titles, so I ran and got one of the other ones to fill the gaping hole in my table. And boom! by the end of the weekend, that one was gone, too.

Entertainment historically does well during economic downturns, but there's a lot more entertainment options out there than there used to be, and much of it is cheaper than the current prices of books. Publishers can't afford to rest on their laurels, and I think this example, anecdotal as it may be, shows pretty clearly what customers are looking for when they go into a bookstore these days.

So we're supposed to sell these bunnies. We (and I assume all of you as well) get lots of notices about how important it is to sell bunnies. The sale of our bunnies is being tracked. (Full disclosure here: I actually think the bunny is cute.) I don't know exactly how many bunnies we've sold, or if it's come up to the number AA thinks our store should sell, I only know we don't have any left. We're sold out.

So yesterday I went through the new shipment. No bunnies. I looked again. My SM looked. My GM looked. Nope, no shipment of bunnies. How, exactly, are we supposed to sell them if they don't send them to us? This is insane.

Yesterday I unwittingly paid $3 for a tomato and all I can say is WTF? It was not a particularly large tomato, nor was it small--pretty medium-sized I would say. It was an Ugly Ripe tomato, which are the ones I usually buy if they're available because they often *are* vine-ripened and thus taste much better than the usual supermarket cardboard ones. But when did they start charging $5 a pound for them?!!! Is it just me, or is that a pretty outrageous price?

The scary thing is I have to wonder how many other $3 tomatoes I've bought without noticing? (And I must note here that I am not currently in a financial position to be paying $3 for a tomato.) I only noticed the price of this one because I only bought three things at the store yesterday: a bottle of OJ, which I know to be $5, some light bulbs, which I happened to notice were $2, and the tomato. So I was a little surprised when the tab was $10. Because, really, I was thinking that a single tomato would be something under a dollar. I am very bad with numbers, though, and if I had been buying all the ingredients for dinner, or even if I had just added two or three other items that I didn't know the exact price of, I probably wouldn't have noticed the $3 for the tomato. Which leads me to think that this had been going on for some time, a sort of stealth drain on my already straightened circumstances. Good grief!

This book is jinxed. No, really. I got it unstuck, and was thinking that by the end of next week I would really have gotten a solid chunk done. Then I got my work schedule--four days instead of two! I can really use the money, but what rotten timing…

My book is stuck again, mostly this time because of outside economic worries. Finding and plotting out practical back-up plans is very time-consuming, not to mention mentally draining. And I still have to run numbers (ick). And it never seems to fail that when something like this comes up, other things happen, too. Like a friend having eye surgery.

But today is my day to try to get my writing back on track, so I've got my fingers crossed.

Bookselling is sometimes very odd. Take last January. We received a directive to put up a "Winter Reads" table in the fiction section. This is the kind of thing we do all the time, and it seldom does very well. This time, we put the table at the front of store, behind the bestseller tables, but I still didn't expect much from it. Then it turned out that we had hardly any of the titles that were supposed to go on the table in stock. So I filled it with similar titles we did have, mostly fairly serious fiction titles that had done well when they were on the "Buy 1, Get 1 Half Price" table, along with a couple of others that I just liked. And it sold like crazy. I had to keep re-stocking it. I still don't know why. Was it the placement of the table? (And yet we have had similarly themed tables there in the past that never did particularly well.) Was it the titles I picked out? Or were people just more inclined to look at a table of winter reads this year? Like I say, very odd.

We got our copies of Lamentation in at my bookstore today and they look really great. I'm going to give them a prominent place on my new release bay tomorrow--here's hoping they do well. Two of us at the store have already read the ARC, so we'll be hand-selling it.

Book is finally, FINALLY gelling. What I can't quite figure out is why it failed to gel earlier. I've tossed out the entire section dealing with the Dales, but honestly I don't really yet see why it didn't work. I just know things are better without it. When I think back to my original idea, I still don't see anything wrong with it--it strikes me as a perfectly viable idea for a book. And yet, it doesn't work. And another question: why on earth did it take so long for me to figure out where I had to go to make the story work? Heaven knows I was trying. Well, first finish the book, then do post mortem I suppose. Anybody who's gone through anything similar, please comment!

Better day today: 1400 words, and not done by teeth-pulling . Went to get spread for couch and to buy things at Circuit City liquidation sale, but the fabric place closed early, and Circuit City has not yet really begun to slash prices. However, Old Navy is having a splendid sale and Crissie and I each got a sweater and I got a pair of pants.

Rough day writing--like pulling teeth all day, and never did get on a roll with it. As a result, only a measly 950 words done. Sometimes I despair of ever finishing this book. Hopefully, tomorrow will go better.

Have been quite ill for almost a week now, but it seems at long last to be passing off. Not, however, a very good start to the new year--I certainly hope it's not a portent. Not that I actually believe in portents, but, well…

Anyway, I'm hoping to have enough of my brain back tomorrow to start writing again, 'cause I really, really need to get on with this book.

Here's the story of last night:

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Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! First quiet moment I've had all day. I had to escape to mary and Jack's for a drink earlier--the chaos in the kitchen was getting too much for me! Turkey turned out quite well for supermarket turkey, and Crissie's stuffing was wonderful. The pumpkin-from-scratch pies also turned out very well, although I don't know that I'm totally in favour of the cognac.

Not much looking forward to work tomorrow, but then at least I'll finally have a day to write on Saturday. I really don't know how I'm going to get this book done if I never have any time to write.

I've been reading Neal Stephenson's ANATHEM. I'm not quite finished yet, but I'm close enough to recommend it wholeheartedly. It's a very cerebral book--not the thing if you're in the mood for a brisk action/adventure--but it's completely captured my attention. I've never read anything of his before, so I don't know if his writing is always this good, but I find his prose very well done and particularly well-suited to his subject.

In truth, when I started the book, I did not expect to finish it. I've been having a problem lately with the middle of books, and I rather expected that once I'd gotten settled in Anathem's world, I'd lose interest in the plot. But not a bit of it. Considering how long the book is, I think that says a lot.

I have been musing lately on the similarities between the election cycle and Christmas in retail. I have been quite interested in the election news recently--not the ridiculous stuff like how much Palin spent on clothes, but things like CNN's electoral map and how each candidate could get to 270, or the article in the NYT the other day which attempted to take the temperature of poor voters in western Pennsylvania. In fact, I can hardly get enough of this stuff at the moment. I caught myself turning up the TV the other day when John King popped up with his Magic Map, and that was when I paused and realized I had done a complete 360. Because for two years now, the news media has been desperately trying to interest me in this stuff or, short of that, to force-feed it to me. And I have been stalwartly ignoring them while mildly irritated by their persistence.

And this struck me as remarkably similar to what I am proposing to inflict on the shopping public. Or rather, what Borders corporate is forcing me to inflict on them. Next week, I shall cover my fairly large store with Christmas decorations and signage, from which my poor customers will avert their eyes as they strive to find the latest James Patterson (he's putting one out every week these days, or so it seems) without having Christmas spirit shoved down their throats. Until, of course, we get to December, when suddenly they, like me and the election, will be very interested indeed.

Day 9 of Kitties. All kitties remain uneaten. Jaimi actually seems to like them, at least in the sense of finding them entertaining. We are unfortunately unsure that her idea of entertainment does not include hunting them down and killing them. She is still muzzled whenever they are loose. Meanwhile, Crissie and I remain amazed at how many things we possess which we believed to be common household objects, but which in fact are kitty toys. We are currently trying to perfect a formula to prevent certain things from becoming kitty toys; I will report progress (if any) on this front later.

I have gotten a flu shot and voted, and am now proudly wearing my early voting sticker for the benefit of the dog and cats. I will admit that I coloured in the oval next to Obama's name with especial care, and then touched it up again when I'd finished with the rest of the ballot. Anyway, no lines for early voting at the library, though there seemed to be a steady stream of people.

On the news the other night they interviewed a small group of Christian women, who were all for Palin. Their spokeswoman went on at some length about her reasons for liking Palin, which all amounted to the fact that she felt Palin was very much like herself and could therefore relate to her in the same way she related to Palin. She gave a lot of specifics about her daily life, comparing it to Palin's. All of which left me with the question: if she thinks Palin is just like her, and therefore intends to vote for Palin, then why does she believe she herself would make a good vice presidential candidate?

Day 3 of kitties. The dog still wants to eat them.

Day 7 of kitties. We are making progress. Jaimi seems slightly less interested in eating the kitties, though we're still keeping her muzzled when they're loose.

Running late again this morning. But I am determined to go look at kittens before I go to work.

Did not do very well with the book yesterday, although I ended up with a couple of things to follow up on when next I have time to sit down and work on them. God only knows when that will be--it's Christmas in retail!