Edda this, Edda that.

Back in high school, (when I actually had to go to a library to research) I did a paper on the two Eddas influence on Tolkien. I don't remember much about that paper, except that a list of dwarf names included Gandalf as well as others that were familiar. 

Having just recently finished a tome about the Vikings ("Children of Ash and Elm") I decided to get the two Eddas for the store. Basically, almost everything we know about Viking mythology comes from these two works, which--even then--were written by Christians shortly after the Viking age. 

What I remember them being called was the "Elder Edda" and the 'Younger Edda." Nowadays, the preferred titles seem to be the "Prose Edda" and the "Poetic Edda."

I don't expect these will sell quickly. I got them because I wanted them.

But it's also a good example of what I think a good bookstore should do. 

1.) Buy something interesting.

2.) Buy something most other stores won't have.

My theory is that everyone is carrying the bestsellers. How many store are carrying the Eddas?

My store is reflection of me, in some ways. I like having books that are significant only to those "in-the-know." That one person, who over the course of year, will pick up the Prose Edda and go, "I can't believe you have this." My theory is that that person will be a customer for life.

Whereas the person who picks up "Where the Crawdad Sings" may not even remember where they bought it. Certainly, the store itself won't be unique or memorable by having it.

When Linda and I owned the Bookmark, we started off with an idiosyncratic selection. Books that came from my parent's eclectic library as well as books I'd gathered over the years. I had enough time to come in and sort through the books, selecting out the books that I thought were interesting.

The latest Tom Clancy or John Grisham or James Patterson weren't interesting to me at all.

I remember once one of our employees lifting up a book and laughing, "Oh, a book about goat herding!" and tossing it in the storage bin.

"No," I said. "That's the kind of book we want."

Anyway, I took my eye off the ball. Linda wanted more time off and so we had a couple of full time employees. A few years passed.

So one day, I walk in the store and I realize that we were just like every other "paperback exchange" type store. Full of Tom Clancy and John Grisham and James Patterson, but nary a goat herding or chicken raising or Edda to be found. No matter how often I told them to look for the unusual, they insisted on filling the shelves with dreck. (Not that the authors are dreck, but that EVERYONE has them.)

So when I buy books for Pegasus, I very purposely give way my whims. Things that aren't necessarily commercial. I pursue interesting sections that don't really pay off. 

Because I just don't want to have a store that has nothing but the lowest common denominator. I don't want my store to be indistinguishable from every other bookstore. 

Hell, Walmart does a better job of that.

PTSD

Post-traumatic stress disorder. Recently, it's occurred to me that I have a mild case of it. I don't want to trivialize the trauma that solders and emergency workers and survivors of abuse feel. But I have this thing about feeling angry and anxious whenever I think about a certain subject. I mean, it doesn't compare, but the anger I feel is just below the surface.

Sports cards. Fucking sports cards.

The reason it's occurred to me recently is that--of all things--sports cards appear to be making a comeback. So, of course, even though I haven't really sold cards for over 20 years, everyone calls me and asks:

"How much are my cards worth? Are you buying? Who is buying? Do you have (random supplies). Where do I go?"

Over the last 20 years I've learned to play dumb, to say, "Gosh. I don't know. Sorry."

I wished that worked.

Of course, sport card collectors being sport card collectors, they don't accept that. They''ll double down and then double down again, getting angry that I'm not buying, I don't know what they're worth and I don't know where they can go to sell them.

I want to say,"Where have you been the last 20 years? What right do you have to demand anything from me!"

I get seriously angry and upset. Just ask Linda anytime the subject comes up. Hell, just ask my customers. My anger immediately surfaces.

"Why," you ask? "What the fuck, man. It's just sports cards." 

A little history. 

Sports cards were great at first. I was probably one of the first 3 or 4 shops in Oregon. It immediately took over the store. At the peak, cards were 85% of our sales! (Which was a trap. More on that later.) I've come to understand bubbles since then, but that was my first bubble, and so I took it personally. There was a Golden Age when everyone was happy and appreciative. I wasted the Golden Age by doubling down on purchases every year--never really making much of a profit. 

And then it turned. Cards were everywhere, at half the price, and scamsters came out of the woodwork--as they always do where money is concerned.

I started getting complaints, then animosity, then outright attacks. Every day, every hour. I got more and more defensive. Not only was I bleeding red ink, I was getting attacked for doing so. 

Remember that 85% of sales? How do I escape?

After one egregious attack; a guy attacking me loudly for selling the price guides at RETAIL!!!! (how dare I...) I put everything in the store at retail. (how DARE I!!!!)

For the next five years, I was constantly attacked and belittled and bitched to, until one day in 1997, a customer whined about me not carrying a certain thing and I blurted, "We're not a card shop anymore."

I still remember the relief I felt upon saying that. 

Honestly, my blood pressure rises even thinking about it. Nothing else in my life has that effect. I took the collapse of Beanies Babies and Comics and Magic and Pogs and Pokemon without any ill effects.

But sports cards?

Fuck sports cards.

Late in the game to get here, but it's nice.

 It's astonishing how well stocked Pegasus Books is right now.

When I bought the store 37 years ago, we were depleted. The previous owner had stripped the already bare-bones store twice while opening shops in Portland. As he told me in wonderment, "I made more in the first week in Portland than I ever made in Bend."

Admittedly, I got the store relatively cheap--but not because of the inventory. What made the store possible was that I only had to put half down and the rest was paid monthly. I went home and did the math and realized that I'd have to do about twice as well as we were currently doing to make the purchase feasible. 

But doing twice as well didn't seem like much of reach. We had the customers, I reckoned--we were just missing the inventory to sell them. I got a couple thousand dollars in the bank loan to flesh out the store and, sure enough, sales immediately doubled.

Sounds good. But doubling only made the store viable--it wasn't exactly flourishing. I used up the paltry reserve cash at the very beginning. We were C.O.D. for the next couple of years, and we were trying to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.

I remember that every time someone said, "Is this all you got?" it was like a stab to my heart.

Still, it seemed to me that the potential was there, and a couple of years after we started, I went up to the C.O.C.C. small business center and they helped me get a loan.

I remember saying, "I think we could do "X" amount of business in about five years."

Adviser: "Why can't you do that now?"

"I have no money for inventory."

"Then let's go get a loan."

The loan was great. It made Pegasus a real store--but it also meant that most of the extra money we were making was servicing the loan. 

That was pretty much the pattern for the first 15 years or so. Striving to reach viable levels while paying off loans. There's a reason this blog is called, "The Best Minimum Wage Job a Middle-Aged Guy Ever Had."  

And then--the disaster of over-expanding into 4 stores; the slamming of consecutive bubble collapses; the huge credit card debt I built up. 

I spent one 7 year period working every day of the year except Thanksgiving and Christmas. I ground my teeth to the nubbin, and it was a race between my hair turning gray or disappearing altogether. Stress city.

Debt payment to the tune of 40% of our gross sales. I repeat, not our net profit, our gross sales. 

Any normal person would have declared bankruptcy and started over. But I was certain the store still had great potential. I also figured that all the hard-won lessons would be wasted. If we could just get out of debt, we'd have a real chance.

And sure enough, when in 2002 we emerged from debt, things immediately became easier. That day marks about the halfway point in our existence. There was debt and after-debt and it was like night and day. 

But we were still a long way from making much money. I turned that 40% of gross into buying inventory--diversifying as best I could. I was still making minimum wage.

Here's the thing. Even then, even without debt, I could never quite fully inventory the main product lines. We could only get about 80% of the way there, especially since I was trying to create a stable platform of product lines, which constantly required new investment. 

Of course, about the time we would have reached full equilibrium, the housing bubble crashed. Bend was a bubble within that bubble. So again, it was back to basics.

It has only been in the last year or so--after more than 35 years, that I felt all the product lines were fleshed out. And once that happened, I wasn't needing to constantly invest in new product lines. I just needed to keep the product lines up and incrementally improve them. 

I fully stocked the poster rack yesterday with new posters. I got a case of jigsaw puzzles that completely filled that section of the store. I ordered some miscellaneous supplies that we don't strictly need but which will probably sell. I ordered some discounted books from my suppliers. I gave Sabrina the go-ahead to make a couple of game orders. And so on.

The store looks and feels prosperous. I mean, you can always tell when you walk into a store whether they are doing well or not. At least I can. It is probably subconscious for most customers. 

What's more, now that the inventory is in, all it requires is maintenance. I don't need to constantly take some of the gross profit and invest in something else. In other words, we don't need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps any more. Of course, I feel like we need to be on guard for disasters--but as of now, the store is working.

Late in the game to get here, but it's nice.

Survivorship bias?

I'm aware that by surviving as a business for 41 years I tend to look back with a survivor bias. I succeeded because I did this or that, instead of maybe just being lucky. Or simply by surviving, I give too much credit to my own attributes. 

That said, I do think I managed to avoid that one big, killer mistake. Looking back, there were a lot of decisions that could have gone either way. 

I made a ton of mistakes--some of them were very close calls. I remember walking to the corner near my store every day for years thinking, "If anything happens today, we're done."

I did start to pile up experience after awhile, and much of that experience came from trial and error; learning as much or more from the errors as from the successes.

Eventually, I felt like I could look at other business and judge their viability by the decisions I saw them making. Of course, I couldn't see the hidden attributes--their level of perseverance or how many resources they had in reserve, but generally speaking I could see if they were zigging when the market was zigging or zagging when the market was zagging.

When they zigged when it was zagging, I'd think, "ah, oh." 

So...Killer mistakes:

Over expanding. (My biggest mistake. I call it the Duncan Corollary (😀) to the Peter Principle. A business owner will expand to their level of incompetence.)

Not recognizing a bubble. (We're all forgiven our first one.)

Under-expanding or not having enough inventory. This seems to be fueled by the business school models of turnover and selling only the bestsellers, carrying what everyone else carries,  instead of making your store unique. Either that, or spending too much money on overhead and taking home too much money instead of buying product.

Too many employees. (Don't own a store is you don't want to work it.)

Letting a manager run the store before it is established. If you run a Mom and Pop business, you make enough money for Mom and Pop--or a Manager--but not both. At least, at first.

Moving uptown or downtown instead of improving existing location. (I suppose not moving when you have a bad location would be equally bad, but I never made that particular mistake.)

Losing zest for the business. (Keep looking for ways to renew your interest. I ain't just about the money.)

Overbooking and overworking. (Big one; I think as many businesses fail from burnout as from lack of money--and the two are inextricably linked.)

Trying to underprice everyone else instead of trying for a retail markup. Conversely, you don't want to overcharge either. Early on, someone told me that you need 40% gross profit margin, and that the closer you charge to retail price, the healthier you are. 41 years later, this still holds true. 

Spending too much money on looks or brand or on advertising. People put way too much stock in "image." It really comes down to whether you have what the customer wants at a price they're willing to pay. They may like your shiny fixtures, but it doesn't mean they'll pay more for them.

Having lousy customer relations. (The number of stores who don't greet their customers is amazing to me.)

Not seeing when a product is dying, or guessing a product is dying too soon. 

Not doing the math. Sometimes there just isn't enough longterm demand, no matter how hard you work or how winning your personality.

Not diversifying. This is a big mistake in Bend. Specialty stores will do well at first, but if they falter or their specialty falters or they get increased competition, they have nothing else to fall back on. Up until recently Bend wasn't big enough to do that. And even if it works now, why not have some backup?

I'm sure there are many more, but these are the ones off the top of my head.

Jonesing for Tolkien.

 Wow. The combination of watching "The Dig" and reading a history of the Vikings, "The Children of Ash and Elm," has really got me jonesing to write a Tolkien pastiche again.

Because, let's face it. Almost all heroic or epic fantasy is either a Tolkien pastiche, or some obvious backlash against writing a Tolkien pastiche, which usually results in something awkward, either too much of the same thing, or something that doesn't really work. 

The only way around that is to write something within the framework--dare I say formula--that Tolkein established, but to write it so well it still comes across as fresh. I'm thinking Lois McMasters Bujold's "World of the Five Gods" trilogy, or Patrick Rothfuss's, "The Kingkiller Chronicle."

By the way, Lois McMasters Bujold is the most under rated SF and Fantasy author ever--not by those in the 'know' -- after all, she's been nominated or won more awards than just about any other writer--but by the general public. I try hard to get people to read her, but most turn me down for some reason. Instead they read drudge like "The Wheel of Time" or...well, any number of "Tolkien pastiches." (I wrote a few myself early on: "Star Axe" in particular. My defense is--I started writing it before Tolkien pastiches flooded the bookshelves.)

I understand that most people are actually looking for Tolkien pastiches. They want to fill that hole in the heart that Tolkien carves. 

My problem was, I filled that hole and it started to drown the entire genre for me. Just more of the same thing. I'm talking dozens of trilogy series that people have recommended as "different" but which almost never are. 

I've read mostly SF and mysteries, non-fiction and mainstream novels in the last forty years. To my own surprise, when I came back to writing, I didn't write heroic fantasy. I wrote horror, and rpg lit and thrillers and urban fantasy and stuff I can't really categorize.

The closest I've come is my four novellas in the "Tales of the Thirteen Principalities." Those are written, but need to be coordinated in their plots, so require some rewriting.

I'm going to try to fill my Tolkien jonesing by fleshing out the novellas. I think those will probably be the next stories I put out there. 

Apparently, the Tolkien hole still needs to be filled.

 

Oldtimers

Dream becomes logic

memory becomes puzzle

the puzzle becomes the dream

the dream becomes a puzzle

hidden voices in a box

and forgotten words

"there he goes again"

"I thought that, too, once

but I've forgotten" 

"I wish he'd be quiet"

"hush, he's trying to remember"

a bus trip in darkness

a trip repeated, always wrong

past lives possible futures

I can't tell which

fragments floating, alone, together

lower case words

in unseen boxes 

Hollywood squares

darkness, light, darkness light

repeated and forgotten

a troubling feeling

I've thought it before

someone's fault

the damaged conversation 

a foreign heart, anxious and alone

a villain and saint

the same blemished man

interrupted by life

something's wrong

Still writing, at least.

Short stories.

I just haven't had the heart to write a full novel again. Writing a novel requires all my attention, every day, every hour. It takes total commitment. Everything else has to slide. 

Basically, I'm lazy.

Then again, I've published 26 novels, 23 of them over the last 8 years. 18 of them were print novels, and 8 more as ebooks. I've had 8 publishers in my career. I've also written a fairly large number of novels that I haven't felt were up to standards. Some of them may still get done, a couple of them I think could be good, but...

I gave it my best. 

The only reason to keep writing is to take it to the next level.

Did I mention, I'm lazy?

I've identified the things I need to do, but they basically come down to working harder, spending more time. Which, you know, is hard for a lazy person. 

But ideas still come to me. The urge to write still nags me. 

I sat down a couple of months ago and wrote a short story. It was fun and fulfilling creatively, and it didn't take a whole lot of time an effort. I published it on my blog. No fuss, no muss.

I sent off a longer story to a publisher, specifically tailored to an anthology. I don't actually expect it to be accepted, but what the hell. It doesn't hurt to try. If it is rejected, I'll just put it up on my blog site. One thing I discovered though was that working within the perimeters of a publisher's needs is a prompt for me. It's much easier to come with specific ideas if I know what they want.

Another small publisher mentioned she wanted to do a werewolf anthology next, so I went to bed wondering if I could come up with an idea. Baby werewolf? Women werewolves who must mate and then eat their mates in order to produce offspring? 

Then I happened on a unique idea, and I've started writing it. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if someone has done it, but I don't want to know. I just want to write it. 

Again, writing a short story is satisfying and doesn't bog me down. I have no idea if I'm any good at it. I suspect I'm probably a better long story writer, but...

Came up with another story idea a month or so ago, and I'm still planning to finish that story too. All of these stories will probably end up on my blog and I suppose if I assemble enough of them, I might find a cover for them and put them on Amazon as a collection. 

Still writing, at least.