Aftermath and an Introduction

Y’know, as much as I love doing the fundraiser, I’m glad it’s over.

I started writing this blog mostly to relax, share interesting news, and amuse myself. I like to cuss in my posts and make the occasional odd joke about clown sex. But, strangely enough, I don’t feel comfortable doing those things in the middle of a charity fundraiser.

Now that we’re done being all charitable on the blog, I can get back to buisiness as usual here. Which is to say I can get back to not doing business and start screwing around instead.

Rest assured that in a week or so I’ll post up some final details about the fundraiser, and some exciting news about a few things that happened right at the end. But right now we’re dealing with the aftermath, assigning prizes, waiting for checks to clear, and preparing to wrap and package roughly a zillion books.

[Editorial note: Don’t email me asking if you won anything. Seriously.]

As many of you might remember from last year’s fundraiser, Sarah was my plucky assistant who worked tirelessly behind the scenes, helping me manage donations, take pictures of books, and package all the prizes.

This year, however, she’s been absolutely no help at all. When I asked her why she was being such a slacker, she reminded me that we had a baby now, and that boobing him took priority over pretty much everything else.

What’s that? Can I post a picture of him? You bet your ass I can….

Here Oot accompanied by one of his compatriots: Friendly Carrot. Not pictured here are Crazy Chicken, Subtle the Colorful Not-Mime, and Perverted Elephant.

Anyway, since Sarah is busy cooing and gurgling, I needed someone else to help me tend to the shop, as it were. That meant that until little Oot is old enough to copyedit, I needed an assistant.

So, without any further ado, I’d like to introduce you to Valerie:

Valerie has been helping me take care of a lot of the epiphenomena that tend to clutter up my life. She does research, organizes stuff, takes care of mail, runs errands….

Generally speaking, she takes care of a bunch of stuff for me, leaving me more time to work on the book.

Over the last two months, that means Valerie has been doing a lot of the heavy lifting behind the scenes of Worldbuilders. She takes pictures of the donations and has managed all the personalized books and posters people bought to support the cause.

She’s also been stockpiling the materials we’ll need to package up this year’s prizes.

Suffice to say that without her help, Worldbuilders would have been a chaotic mess, and I wouldn’t have gotten a lick of work done on my revisions.

Anyway, she’s been working really hard on all this stuff. So I figured it was high time I introduced her…

Say hello Valerie.

Hello.

No. Sorry. That won’t work. You can’t be purple, Sarah’s purple. There will be mass confusion. You’ll have to pick a different colour.

I like green. Can I be green?

That suits you, but it’s a little too bright. Could you bring it down a bit?

How about this?

Perfect.

Everyone, meet Valerie. Valerie, this is everyone.

Say hello, everyone.

pat