This is why I majored in journalism, not business

I think I've finally caught up with most everything from the past week. There's a few more things I need to do, but all in all, things are back to normal here. I've updated the Namesake store and added in the stuff from the con, so we have a few sales going again. I've been checking into registering as a small business, but the stuff is just mind-boggling. There's a small-business development center at Shippensburg University in Carlisle. The big question is how to handle the fact that Isa and I are in separate countries. I think the overall umbrella is either Limited Liability Partnership (LLP) or Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) vs. sole proprietorship. But, the entire business is being conducted out of my second bedroom, so yeah. Confusing.

I've also been looking for small business software for our little business, but a lot seems to have more than what we need. I'd like something that will take care of inventory, expenses and income, but haven't found anything I really like yet. Square, which does our credit card reader, has a pretty robust little inventory program but it's not perfect. It doesn't keep track of stock, etc. We're not breaking even yet on the stuff I bought for FanExpo, but I wasn't expecting that. Still, I want us to be organized. We're fairly organized right now, but I want to be able to point to one thing and go, "See? Here's the books on Namesake (or Fairylogue Press as the business side is known.) Aren't they pretty? And organized?"

We've been talking about doing mini comics after being inspired by little_teacup. We've been discussing a few ideas that Isa had, and then the other night she goes, "What ideas do you have? We never work on anything you want to do."

Oh.

It's strange. I'm pretty prolific as a writer, but for the large part, I play in other people's universes. I write fanfic and even though Namesake is an original story, it began as Isa's idea. She allowed me to play in her sandbox and it became both of ours. I've had a few ideas along the way for my own stories, but it never occurred to me to actually flesh them out. Confession time: When I was 19-20, I decided I wanted to be a romance novelist. I put a lot of time into writing an original time-travel romance. That thing sucked. I'm not quite sure what happened to it. But, granted, that was 11-12 years ago, and I'm a much better writer now. I really should work on developing my own projects based off of what I really love - historic-based fantasy.

So, after thinking it over for a day, I proposed a mini-comic idea to Isa. We then refined it a bit, and I think the result will be pretty awesome. It centers around little-known powerful women in history and will involve quite a bit of research on my end. Mike, sweetie, I'm off to the library. See you in a couple of hours days months.

I discovered a great store for coffee and tea in Camp Hill called One Good Woman. It's lovely. It has a selection of gourmet foods and other gifts, but the awesome part was all the teas and coffees. It smelled wonderful. I got some chai to try, a half-pound of the awesome coffee they had out as a sample, a reusable bag that'd been marked down modeled after a Japanese cupcake and a new travel tea mug. This mug is awesome. You use a lever to drop the basket with tea leaves into the hot water. When you're done brewing, flip the lever again and the basket rests against the lid so the tea doesn't overbrew. It keeps heat extremely well, and my tea was still warm a couple hours after I made it.

However, if you want to demonstrate how the cup works, don't do it with the lid off. The latch catches on the edge of the lid when it's not in the cup. How do I know this? Well ... let's just say the carpet by my desk now smells like chai tea leaves.

Writing meme

Because we have an early night at work, I stole this from a few folks:

1) Give me a pairing.
2) Give me a setting.
3) I will write you a three-sentence fic.

Note that I might write some of these as friendship rather than paired up.