In which I’m baaaaaaaaack

On July 26, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

istock-499343530 I officially restarted my career as an educator today, with a leadership team meeting at my new school. I’d only really ever been in one small part of the building before, so I took a while and wandered around, trying to get a feel for the place.

We, uh, may have a roach problem. It was one of the first things my new boss said to me when I walked in. She’s kinda horrified, so there’s gonna be all sorts of exterminators out between now and school starting. I’m fully aware that every old building this size has some roaches but I saw two of them that were both over an inch long while I was there and that’s gonna be a problem.

That’s all I’ve got to complain about, though. You can usually identify the bad seed in any group of educators within a couple of minutes of the start of a meeting, and as far as I know there wasn’t one, which is pretty damn exciting. Everyone seems really dedicated and hyped about the school year starting, and it got infectious fast. I just wish I had a better handle on what my actual job is going to be like on a day-to-day basis, but that’ll come sooner or later.

I also had a moment about halfway through the meeting where I realized that it looks like the places where I disagree with my new boss about things all seem to be places where she has more faith in the kids than I do. I don’t know that I’m going to unpack that any more than pointing it out, at least right now, but it was an interesting thing to take note of.

I haven’t sold a book on Amazon since a day or two after I got back from Indy Pop Con, which was an embarrassingly long time ago. Somebody out there has to be looking for something to read, right? My books are inexpensive and delicious, check ’em out!

First Day of Vacation: I Went to Work edition

On June 18, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn life2 Comments

giphy — I was looking for a .gif of the “Get me a G-O-B” scene, but this’ll do.

Last week was an exceptionally shitty week to be a furniture salesman– easily the worst single week in my entire two-year tenure, in fact, and is is nearly unimaginable that June will not end up as my worst single month as a furniture salesman as well. So when a previous customer called last week and said that she was out of town but wanted to make an appointment to come in and spend a few thousand dollars, I happily scheduled her for 10:00 this morning and came in anyway. While I was there, I caught a customer from yesterday who had had to postpone his purchase because of a freeze on his credit accounts– meaning that I had, in a single hour, on a day when I was not supposed to be at work, more total sales than in the seventeen days prior to that hour.

So, yeah. Come into work on my day off, but make hundreds of dollars in commissions during that hour I came in? No problem.

Then I returned something to Best Buy, came home, played video games, mowed the lawn, played more video games, got some important emails, responded to those emails, finished my renewal for my teachers’ license (which will expire in 2028, a year that is so far away I cannot comprehend it), played more video games, got some light cleaning done around the house, ate dinner, and now I’m writing thishere blog post.

My big plan for tomorrow? Breakfast is gonna be sausage grits and a fried egg. Ask me how excited I am about my breakfast tomorrow.

I am so excited about my breakfast tomorrow.

The remainder of the day will be split between more video games– can you tell I caved and bought Dark Souls Remastered once I realized I’d have a solid week where I didn’t have to go to work?– and the Composition of Fiction.

Not bad for my first day off.

Quick note

On May 22, 2018May 22, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I actually stayed home from work sick today, which is not a thing I’ve done very often during the two years I’ve been at my current job. Two goddamn years!!

But anyway. I spent most of the day working on… something. Two somethings, technically. Only it’s past 9:00 right now, and that makes now not the greatest of times for a big announcement.

Which is just my way of saying: stay tuned for a big announcement tomorrow.

Busy morning

On May 18, 2018May 18, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn WritingLeave a comment

Brazel-Grond Bookmark Front It was official before, but it’s officialer now: I’m going to be at IndyPopCon again in a few weeks, from June 8-10, in Booth 1213, right next to Artists’ Alley. I think I’m sharing a booth with someone– space sold out way faster than I anticipated this year, and I only got into the con at the last minute, but I don’t know who my booth buddy is going to be yet. (EDIT: Never mind! The email came through this afternoon!) At any rate, I’ve spent the morning ordering books and bookmarks for the con, including the new one to the right, based on the cover for Tales: The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 3.

(That book could really use some more reviews. I know some of y’all read it. Please? Pretty please?)

I suspect I’m going to regret putting that Prostetnic logo at the bottom there– I think it’s gonna wash out– but we’ll see.

At any rate, this is the first of three conventions I’m doing this year– one in Indianapolis, one in Kokomo, and one in Elkhart, so I’m trying to mentally justify the ridiculous amount of money I just spent by reminding myself that it’s covering all three of the cons. We’ll see if that works or not; the money’s out of my bank account nonetheless. Popcon was a lot of fun the last time I went so I have high hopes for this one. Wil Wheaton and Levar Burton are both going to be there. I may try to see if I can use Twitter to get Wil to swing by my booth at some point. It probably won’t work– I imagine if the celebs go to the vendor floor at things like that they tend to get mobbed– but you never know, right? I sorta had Timothy Zahn at my booth once; this isn’t much different, is it?

There are movies we need to see coming out each of the next two weekends, so my wife took the afternoon off so we can go see Deadpool 2. So maybe you’ll get a bonus post tonight. I think it’s probably safe to say I’m gonna like the movie, right?

In case you ever thought I was smart, ch. 3987

On April 25, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Work2 Comments

derpyderp_400x400 This was an exceptionally long week at work– it was decided (not by me) that yesterday needed to be a Move Every Single God Damn Thing in the Store day, and I spent the majority of it out of breath and sweating, which are exactly the characteristics you want in a purveyor of fine furniture and furniture-related goods and services.

I am old and fat and out of shape, guys, and I signed up to be a salesman. If I wanted to work as a mover I would have made sure to be 20 years younger and substantially more svelte. And yet.

But that’s not the point of this post. The point of this post is that in addition to being fat and old and out of shape and sweaty and out of breath, attractive characteristics all, I am also an idiot.

So this lady comes in and wants four $75 dining chairs. She wants to buy one of them from clearance at half off (fine) and order the other three new. No problem! She’s already decided on everything before coming in so everything ought to go really fast, right? I write the ticket, call a manager over to drop the price of the clearance chair, and tell her how much the sale will be. She is writing a check, and blinks a couple of times and then, visibly embarrassed, asks me the name of the store.

I tell her and her day immediately gets worse as her brainfart continues and I have to spell the name of the store for her. It is obvious that this woman is not a moron and is just having a bad couple of minutes where the synapses aren’t firing right. We cool. I make a joke about having made a stupid math error earlier in the day. It is worth pointing out that the joke wasn’t true, and I was just trying to make her feel better.

I tell her how much to write the check for. She pauses, thinking, and comments that the number doesn’t seem right.

“The one chair is half off, remember,” I say.

“Oh,” she says, and writes the check for the agreed-upon amount, takes her clearance chair, and leaves the store.

Two minutes later it occurs to me that $75 times three and a half is not $118, which is what the check she wrote was for, and I look at the invoice and discover that I only sold her two chairs. She not only noticed the error but pointed it out to me and I still looked at $118 and went “Yeah, that’s definitely the right amount to charge someone for four goddamn chairs.”

I had to call her back and tell her she’d need to either call me with a credit card number or come back to the store and write a second check if she wanted all four chairs. She was back in ten minutes, having figured out on her own that I wasn’t able to math. Luckily, both of us blamed ourselves for the mistake getting through.

Earlier today, I sold something to someone who lives on a street very near me. She asked me what street I lived on and I forgot my address. I literally could not remember the name of the street I live on. It took way too long.

I am not having a good week.

Woo Saturday!

On March 31, 2018March 31, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn life1 Comment

scary-easter-bunny-6 I sold nearly sixteen thousand moneydollars worth of furniture and furniture-related services and accessories at work today. The boy is at his grandparents’ so that he can do an egg hunt in the morning, because I’ll be damned if I’m going to allow any pagan bunny nonsense in my house. I am watching Into the Badlands with my wife and sipping on a very small bottle of moscato.

Yes, I am drinking the alcohols. Not many of them! But I never drink the alcohols so this is a bit of an event.

Happy Easter, if that’s your thing. I don’t have to work tomorrow, so … thanks, Jesus, I guess?

Oh god damn it

On February 12, 2018February 12, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn Work5 Comments

hand-holding-i-give-up-sign So.

I have made $2500 in commission on my sales this year. This year. Six weeks. I did the math; I’m selling furniture for less than $11 an hour. The company is currently earning interest on sixty thousand dollars of undelivered product. I don’t get paid until shit ends up in people’s homes and everything I’ve sold is either still backordered or waiting for someone’s house to be ready. Right now I expect to make minimum wage this week. If I wasn’t married to someone who makes a lot more money than me, I’d be staring down homelessness right now.

I had a $12,000 ticket last weekend that didn’t earn me a single dime and won’t pay off until May. That big $18,000 sale at the very end of December? Scheduled to deliver on March 20th, still five weeks away; I don’t see a cent until then.

I was at work for nine hours today and sold $13 worth of product. A co-worker came in on his day off and made $3300 in sales in less than half an hour.

Fuck this. I could literally be making more money flipping burgers.

I just applied for a teaching position.

God fucking help me.

Odds and ends/proof of life post

On January 5, 2018January 5, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn life3 Comments

polar-vortex-nasa-670-1 I woke up the other day and consulted my watch to discover that it was thirteen degrees below zero outside. I feel like we were largely spared polar vortex horror last year, for the most part, but this year has definitely picked back up on the trend of the last several years, which is that the weather at the end of Winter Break is horrifying enough that school being cancelled and the break being extended is at least plausible if not guaranteed. The boy goes back on Monday, finally, and I think the weather will be back to winter-normal by then, mostly, but holy fuck has it been cold around here lately. There’s maybe, I dunno, fifteen inches of snow on top of the house, too, which means that we probably got eighteen to twenty since it tends to compress under its own weight after a while. On the plus side, the new car appears to handle pretty damn well on ice and snow, or at least the new tires I put on it not too long ago appear to have done their job.

IN OTHER NEWS: the Lumberjack Beard is dead; long live the Lumberjack Beard. I don’t normally shed my winter beard this early in the year, winter having just barely started, but apparently the answer to this year’s beard question, i.e. “How long can I let this fucker get before it starts to drive me insane?” is about nine weeks. Granted, I brushed it backward to make it easier to shave off for that picture, but this was easily the bushiest I’d ever let my beard get, and unexpected side effects were starting to crop up– like eating getting much messier and– and this one really surprised me– all that hair on my face actually making it harder to sleep. I think if I groomed it a bit better it wouldn’t have been as much of a thing, but I’m a novice at this and wasn’t super interested in putting in the research time. I’d intended to just dial it back but ended up going completely back to the vandyke that I keep on my face for the other eight months of the year. I may grow it back right away or I may not, but I won’t be doing Full Lumberjack again anytime soon.

My phone is starting to slowly fill up with pictures like this, and I’m starting to see grid shapes with arcane symbols and glowing lines on them every time I close my eyes. My buddy James Wylder posted a shot to Instagram of a bunch of notes and diagrams he was working with as he was playing through The Witness, and upon discovering that the PlayStation store had it for $15 and deciding I could use a more cerebral break from Horizon: Zero Dawn and Nioh, I was in. Two days later I’m hooked as fuck. I’d compare the game to Myst, but Myst had a genuine story to it and this really doesn’t; the reward for solving puzzles is more puzzles and occasional frustration and headaches. There have been a couple of puzzles where I’ve had to cheat to get through them and at least one where even when the answer is on the screen in front of me I’ve been unable to figure out why the right answer was the right answer, but for the most part it’s hitting a nice sweet spot for me– challenging enough that solving the puzzles isn’t automatic, but not so challenging that my rapidly-becoming-legendary lack of patience with video game bullshit kicks in. If noticing that some vines near you are a different color from the other vines and then figuring out how to get outside and line your screen up perfectly so that the vines trace the right path on the grid in front of you, and then taking a picture of it with your phone because fuck that, you don’t seriously expect me to memorize this, do you? sounds up your alley, check it out.

I had plans to write fiction this week, but they were burned to the ground once I realized that I’d have the boy with me all day yesterday and today for the last two non-weekend days of his break. I’ve been ~~lazy as hell~~ on hiatus since Tales came out but it’s time to get back on the horse. Next Thursday, then, I will either officially begin work on the latest version of the sequel to Skylights or start working on my entry for this anthology or both. Because battle poets.

Book sales have had a nice little spike lately too. After most of a year where if I was selling a book or two a month I was pretty happy with it, I’ve sold five books today, two yesterday, and twelve since Christmas Eve– and that absent any sales or any particular promotion on my part other than a few surprisingly well-received Tweets. In an absolute sense that doesn’t seem like much to brag about but I’m still in holy shit people are sending me money for stories mode, and I kinda hope I never break out of that.

That said, if anybody else wants to keep the ride going, that would be awesome. Reviews would be cool, too, especially of the three that aren’t even at 10 yet. Wanna help me out?