Today is a very bad day.
I have discovered that I screwed up lots of Dancing Barefoot orders that were placed on the onthe 27th and 28th of May. I hope it’s as few at 10 or 20, but it could be as many as 50. It’s totally my fault: I wasn’t prepared for the enormous volume of orders, and I made a really stupid rookie error in the printing of orders, and the recording of which orders had been printed, and which were not. Also, those days right before the cruise are a complete blur, which doesn’t help.
If you placed an order for the book during those twodays, and you haven’t gotten it yet, please send your PayPal receipt to me. I know that this is totally lame, and I’m sort of opening myself to ridicule here, but I have no inventory tracking system of any kind, because I never thought I’d sell more than a couple hundred books. I’m working on a database now, though, entering 2,000 orders by hand. It’s going to take awhile.
I’ve also gotten a couple of books back, which the USPS delivered to the “return” address, rather than the “to” address, and I’ve been sent back some that various post offices have “eaten.”
Overall, we’re doing good. I mean, other than my gigantic screw up, the USPS has only hosed 10 or so orders.
UPDATE: I think I’ve tracked down the source of my colossal screw up, and I think I have it under control now. It looks like I somehow missed all the orders placed on the 27th and 28th. So I am reprinting them all, and sending them all out First Class Mail tomorrow. It’s about . . . oh my sweet christ. It’s about 100 books.
I’m going to go tighten my hairshirt some more. I feel terrible about this. 🙁

WWdN reader John sent me this e-mail:

Hi,
I just realized today that you’re mentioned in the infamous Andy Warhol
Diaries. Unfortunately not by name, but it’s definitely you he’s talking
about, so I thought I’d send the quote along just in case you haven’t
seen it before.
“Wednesday, August 13, 1986
Went to see Stand by Me at the Coronet or Baronet. These four little kids and there’s the Fat kid, and the Brilliant kid and the Crazy kid. The only disappointing thing was that the kid who’s a writer they show writing about it later in life, and this really cute little kid has turned into Richard Dreyfuss! It should’ve been Richard Gere. Then I would’ve been happy.”
I’m a huge Warhol fan, so I thought it was pretty funny to stumble onto this little surprise. Hopefully, you’ll also think it’s cool.

Uh, yeah. I think this is just a little bit cool.
/understatement
🙂

My good friend J. Keith vanStraaten won’t be able to come to my birthday party, because he’s in New York working on a cool job he just booked.
He’s also got a GREAT story in Salon that you all should read.
And when you’re done with that, get even more interview madness by reading my interview with Film Threat.

The train ride home was wonderful. I love to take the train, and Andy says why better than I could.
I listened to my iPod, while I read three issues of PS238 (if you haven’t read it yet, RUN to your local comic shop and pick it up. It’s awesome), the newest PvP, and re-read one of my favorite stories of the last few years, The Red Star. I forgot how powerful The Red Star’s first few issues were . . . I’m glad I have it in Graphic novel form to carry around.
Graphic novels are great, because they’re more durable than traditional comics, so they can be read without damaging our precious first printings, heavy enough to be used as a weapon in dire circumstances, and their shiny covers can be used to reflect the sunlight and signal a plane, should the reader become lost or stranded.
While I was at Comic-Con, I reached the following conclusion: John and Judith Kovalic are two of the greatest people on this planet. Matter of fact, I would travel to pretty much any con that John’s going to be attending, just so I can hang out with them again.
And just because hanging with John and Judith wasn’t enough, I also got to spend quality time with Steve Jackson, and almost missed my train because I was geeking out with Scott Kurtz and Aaron Williams.
And just because that isn’t enough, I got to meet the guys from Penny Arcade.
And just because that isn’t enough, I just saw that I am in today’s Penny Arcade.
I’d better stop before I hit the top of this bell curve of coolness.

I’m in the train depot in San Diego, totally getting online through a WiFi hotspot that’s sponsored by bandwidthbay.org.
I think it’s beyond cool that I can sit here, and blog from my iBook!
Comic-con was really fun, but way too big. There was so much stuff to see, and so many people trying to see it, it’s all just a blur.
Oh! Know who I met today? Tiffany Taylor. Oh. My. God. She’s beautiful. And she took a picture with me.
I’m wearing my The Cheat shirt from Homestarrunner.com, and when I was walking around the con this morning, several people shouted “It’s The Cheat!!” to which I replied, “Hang on! We’re taking this baby to the moooon!!11!”
(Yes, just like On*Star, I pronounced the “11!” at the end of that sentence.)
Oh shit. My train is boarding right now. I gotta go!