The choir and congregation at Gloucester Cathedral –
I’ll post more seasonal music as I find them.
Since last weekend’s Christmas on the Square at Goliad was pretty much wiped out by bitter cold, and a second craft sale which I had planned to participate in was cancelled, I have a good inventory of books on hand. I am setting up a special on-line Christmas sale for the next week, from Friday, December 13th until next Thursday the 19th. I only have a single copy of the hardbound Complete Trilogy and four of The Quivera Trail, but plenty of everything else. So – fifteen per cent off my usual direct sale price. (Plus sales tax, and shipping.)
The order page is here – pay by credit card or through Paypal.
I will honor that price for orders received from now to the 19th, but if I run through what I have on hand, I will have to re-order stock from the printers. In that case, I will not be able to mail books out until after Christmas … it’s the printer’s high demand season too, and everyone is trying to get stuff mailed.
Merry Christmas! And remember, when it is cold outside and the snow is up to the windows, there is nothing better than curling up in a comfy chair with a good book … especially if it is one of the books that I have written.
If this Facebook auto-publish works…
My Christmas marathon continues this weekend – the two hour drive to Goliad for Miss Ruby’s Book Corral, as part of Christmas on the Square. I am loosing track of how many times we have done this event, but it must be about the forth or fifth time. I can’t even remember how I got onto it in the first place, although attending a talk about a local archeological dig in Beeville a while ago might have had something to do with it.
Goliad is a charming little town, with the courthouse square at the heart of it. I am pretty certain that everyone knows each other in passing, and if they don’t, then they have friends in common. The city streets in the old part of town are studded with huge, ancient oak trees, which were so treasured that the streets sometimes go around them. Santa arrives promptly at noon on Saturday, riding on a tame (and probably heavily sedated longhorn) and accompanied by a posse of cowboys.
.
It is one of the handful of towns in Texas which were settled before 1800, and the current shale oil boom has been extremely kind to the local area. The first year that we drove down for it, it seemed like the countryside was more or less deserted, and all the little towns along the way were half boarded up and deserted. Not so last year – they were booming, with the storefronts occupied, and new petrochemical installations and mancamps everywhere. But looking at the weather forecast, it looks like it’s going to be briskly cold for the next few days, which is OK, because it’s a little embarrassing, having to wear shorts and run the AC in December.
One more event – and then I can relax and enjoy Christmas!
That is what our booth at the Boerne Market Days contained this last weekend – the first time that we have done Boerne Market Days as a vendor and not as a strolling shopper. Saturday morning was rainy in San Antonio, and the skies were overcast all day. None of the vendors minded not having any sunshine – as long as it didn’t rain! We had a nicely-placed booth space, about midway between the bandstand at one end, and the food-trucks parked at the other. By the way, the gorditas are fab. Sometimes they make the chicken gordita with cut-up chicken chunks, instead of ground chicken meat – but still tasty, anyway. Another good thing – one of the big trash cans was right in front of us, so no need to set aside a bag for our own trash. And it was a landmark for anyone looking for us.
My daughter and I have done a lot of book events, some of them in conjunction with a craft fair, like Goliad’s Christmas on the Square, so we pretty much know the drill; bring tablecloths, plenty of stock (packed in plastic tubs with lids) plenty of change, receipt books, lots of flyers, postcards and business cards, and something to ornament the table with … and chocolate candy. Most everyone likes chocolate, although one of the most relentless book marketer I know has a cookbook with recipes incorporating lemons – she makes lemon cookies or cake, and gives away samples.
This time, we had two more improvements to our retail efforts; a folding dolly hand-truck, which can carry one of the heaviest tubs and one of the lighter ones at a time, and folds up very compactly… no, it isn’t industrial-strength, but better than schlepping the heaviest tubs of books by hand for half a block or more. $20 bucks at Sam’s Club, which might very well be the best and most useful $20 ever spent there, over the long haul. The other was a little attachment for my daughter’s cellphone, which allows us to process credit card payments to her Tiny Bidness Paypal account. We couldn’t process credit/debit accounts before, which has sometimes been a bit of a bind since … well, not too terribly many people carry around checkbooks any more, or cash, either – and going to an ATM and getting cash for a sale is sometimes a bit of an inconvenience for people.
If we keep this up – this making an appearance on the regular market circuit – there are certain things that we will just have to get, in addition to the storage tubs and the hand-truck. We rented the pop-up tent, two folding tables and a chair from the Boerne Market Days management, but eventually we will have to get our own 10 X 10 pop-up; most of the other regular vendors had them, in varying degrees of quality, with zip-up sidewalls for additional privacy, security and shelter from the elements. We will also probably invest in a pair of banners, either to clip to the front of the pop-up or to the front of the table, advertising our various enterprises.
We made back and a bit more the amount that we paid for the space, and rental of the conveniences – but not very much more. We talked to many other vendors, who were similarly disappointed. Either it’s just not close enough to Christmas to loosen the purse strings – or that everyone is looking at the current economic situation with a very tight hold on the pocket-book.
Even so, this last weekend was a learning experience – and one of them was that Boerne Market Days is very animal friendly. A lot of shoppers had dogs on leashes, and one iconoclast among the vendors eve had a pair of infant goats on display. They were such cute babies – but I am told that when they are fully-grown, they can be evil in the extreme.
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