You quickly learn that you’d better learn to love meetings or you’re going to hate your job. I’m fortunate to work from home, so my participation in meetings I might otherwise have to attend is limited or not required, but I still have a lovely routine schedule of phone meetings (anyone who knows me will laugh at this, as they know the phone is not my favorite). But those people up there in the office? Some days I wonder how they manage to get desk work done, they’re at so many meetings. I feel for them.

Which is why I cringed and felt some guilt when I sent an email today suggesting we set up a meeting…talk about being dragged to the dark side!

Last week, the day before I left for the Desert Dreams conference, I got a rather unexpected phone call. It was a long-time friend, who I hadn’t heard from in almost a year. He was calling to chat, to catch up…and to see if I was interested in a job.

Once, years ago, he and I worked together (in my former profession, in mental health) and he knew I was good at it (then, we can only assume I still would be!). His company was looking for another therapist and as he was thinking of qualified people he knew in the area, my name came to mind. So he asked me, “I didn’t know if you were happy with what you’re doing now, so I thought, if you’re not, you might be interested in this job.” He went on to name the pay and the benefits (both reallllly attractive) as well as the schedule and job duties (also realllly attractive).

The thing is, I loved what I did before, working in mental health. It was challenging and interesting–and incredibly stressful. But it was a calling for me, because when I started out, I didn’t make a lot of money–no one who works at the jobs I did really does it for the money (very small amount of money). You do it because you love it. By the time I was pregnant with Brianna and left my last job, just before having her, I was making great money, had an awesome job (I referred to it as my dream job) working for the state, with amazing benefits. I left it to be a stay-at-home mom and ended up working my way into editing (which I’d already been doing on the side, so it was a natural progression).

Now, of course, you all know where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing the last three years. I think I’m pretty good at it too. And if you don’t know if I love it or not, by now, then you don’t know anything about me And, I do make good money doing it (though I also think this is also a profession you do because it’s a calling, not because you’re going to be fabulously wealthy), I get to travel, and I get to talk about something I love–books. But I have to admit…I was tempted. For maybe 30 seconds. I see publishing as a precarious business, no matter who you are. Author, agent, editor for a major NY house. You never know what will happen in the industry. Mental health? Not so precarious. People always need therapists, and this job came complete with training in the type of therapy they use, flexible schedule and, did I mention, great salary and benefits?

But, you know, in the end, I didn’t even have to think before I said “nope, I really am happy where I’m at and happy with what I’m doing, but thanks for thinking of me!” Because it was the truth. It is nice to know I have options if I need them, but I don’t plan on ever needing them!

Admit it, though, you’d have missed me

This might actually be useful for those of you out there wanting to make business cards for the upcoming conference season. I discovered this site, Deyey, via my new favorite site in my RSS feed, MakeUseOf.com. Deyey is a site that will guide you through the process of creating your own business/name cards, and will even allow you to upload your own graphics (like a book cover) for use on the business cards. There are a lot of different fonts and colors available for you to choose from. Really, totally customizable to your needs.

Here’s a quick sample I whipped (excuse the pun) up. You can click on it to see a larger version.

They provide you with three different downloads, including a printable version which has the bleed off and everything you need to upload to a site like Vista for printing. Worth a look for all you authors out there who don’t have cards yet. They’re handy things to have when you’re sitting at a conference meal with an editor/agent/reader or another author and want to be able to give them something tangible (besides a bookmark).

To go a whole week without posting, but I’ve been slam busy. I answered something like 150 emails today. That’s all I did all day. Answer emails. I now have only 2 emails flagged that I need to look at. I’m logging off the computer before that number goes up.

Samhain Publishing is looking for content editors and final line editors.

At this time we are searching for motivated individuals interested in working part time (one to two releases a month) as an editor in all genres of romance and erotica. Preference for both positions is given to non-authors or to writers not actively seeking publication/pursuing a career in writing. Anyone accepting a position editing with us will not be eligible for future publication/submission to Samhain as an author.

Duties include but are not limited to reading and responding to submissions, contracting books, editing and finalizing manuscripts, communicating with authors, final line editors, other content editors and Samhain executives about various things such as cover art, excerpts, blurbs, promotion and more.

We are especially interested in finding editors who, once they’ve learned and been with the company for a period of time, would be interested in traveling and attending conferences/giving workshops and talks to RWA groups throughout the year as a representative of Samhain.

Compensation for content editors involves both monthly flat fees as well as royalty based pay on ebooks and print books. Residuals are paid on all of an editor’s backlist and pay is monthly.

Compensation for copy editors is on a per word basis.

Interested applicants for the content editor position should email Angela James at
CE-employment@samhainpublishing.com ( CE-employment AT samhainpublishing.com)
For the final line editor (copy editor) position: employment@samhainpublishing.com (employment AT samhainpublshing.com)

Hiring for content editors will be done as I find qualified applicants. I will close hiring once I feel I’ve found a sufficient number of editors. Hiring for final line editors is ongoing. Please check the employment page at Samhain Publishing if you are unsure if job positions are open. http://samhainpublishing.com/employment

*permission to forward granted*

Bad blogger, I know. I might have mentioned this already, but just after Christmas (right after we sent Brianna to my in-laws, of course) I got sick. I was pretty sick for about four days which not only ruined any plans Josh and I had for our alone time that week (and we had a few) but also put me way behind on work. And prevented me from playing with the new toys I got over the holidays.

Now Brianna is home and I’m busting my butt trying to get caught up and actually, get ahead. See, I have a pretty intense conference schedule for 2008, April, July and August being the “worst” months for me. And I know that at conferences I won’t get a whole lot of editing done, so I need to be well ahead of the game before that starts. I’ve already been cutting back on editing over the past six months, but I’ve been thinking about more. Problem is? I love editing, not just the admin stuff. Love editing. And it does make me money, so there is that.

Working from home is challenging. I know that people think that working at home is the best set up ever, and I have to admit that it has its definite perks (no timeclock to punch, no set hours) but you know that also means no paid vacation or sick time. Oh and no overtime. Even if you work until midnight some nights. And that you’re always at work? To be honest, I work harder now, working from home, than I ever did in any other setting. I know other work at home moms (I can think of at least a dozen off the top of my head, who have said similar things). Now, it’s not the most stressful job (working in mental health and as an aid in nursing homes has that all wrapped up), though of course it has its stress, but when I say I work harder, I mean I’m more focused and for many more hours than ever before. It’s not unusual for me to sit down at my computer in the morning and move only to either use the bathroom or get myself lunch, until it’s time to get Brianna 7 hours later. I don’t watch TV. I rarely even listen to music. Just me and the noise of the fish tanks. And then I work evenings, nights (I wasn’t kidding about the working until midnight thing) and weekends (I worked four hours yesterday morning answering emails and the like after Brianna got me up at 6am.) I answer emails from my phone, while on vacation, out shopping.

Anyway, the reason I’m talking about this is because it’s the reason I haven’t been blogging a lot. I have had to be pretty disciplined with my time. Working from home forces that from me because otherwise I would never get anything done. I’d keep getting distracted! Then add in being behind because of being sick, wanting to be ahead because of conferences and I don’t have the mental energy left for a lot of blogging. Or time. I’d rather take that time to visit other people’s blogs and comment, or play Scrabulous on Facebook I’m going to try and be better about at least being mildly interesting, but really, whenever a blogger has to make that promise isn’t it like the kiss of death?

Last week in a post I mentioned that there were some changes in the works that I couldn’t discuss. It was announced today on our Samhain business loop and also on Dear Author. You can read the full text there, but in short, when Samhain re-opens to submissions next month, we will be refocusing our efforts on romance and books with romantic elements. We will no longer be accepting a number of genre submissions including non-fiction, horror, mystery, mainstream fiction and young adult. This was a much-discussed decision and one not made easily at all, but I think it’s going to be an excellent thing for us, so we can concentrate on building the company further, before branching out again.

My inbox. Josh had five days off. Somehow, we managed to spend a lot of those doing stuff. I’m not sure what. Just stuff. I didn’t answer a lot of email, though. He’s back at work today, Brianna is in New York with my in-laws until Tuesday and I’m wondering if I’ll ever get caught up. But it was all worth it!