Another update on our plans - 2014 version

Now Playing -  Here It Goes Again by OK GO

 

Life -  

The more we think we have a plan figured out, the more curves life seems to throw at us. A few months ago, we laid out our plans for the rest of 2013 and our moves in 2014.  It was a fine plan, but a number of major problems presented themselves. Our house in Idaho was severely under-appraised due to a bunch of foreclosures in the area, making it worth less than we actually owed on it. That's a situation that will likely improve, eventually, but for the time being, that means my mom buying it would be a bad move for both her and us. She could get a better house in the area for less money than our place and find one that would suit her needs better. We'd end up losing over $30k if we sold now. On top of that, our Christmas was dramatically worse than we'd predicted. Between the government shutdown, a late Thanksgiving and a myriad list of other reasons, people weren't shopping as heavily as predicted. Our shop wasn't doing itself any favors either. Apart from our soaps, which we'd debuted too late to really get the full benefit, we didn't have anything new and exciting to draw in shoppers.

After we'd gotten the news of the house, I made a trip out there and we decided that the best option would be for Lindsay and I to move back to Idaho, to our old home on Rosewood. That would mean forgoing our plans to move to Washington, but it wasn't all bad news. We still like the house on Rosewood, we just never really gave it a chance. The whole time we lived there, we were looking for plans to move away. Which is really how we've spent the last... seven years or more, actually.

The initial plan had been to sell the trailer and abandon Maine as soon as the holidays were over, traveling south to avoid the weather and get back to Idaho in late January. It would mean us losing money on this trailer, selling it as fast as we could, just to get out of here, the exact reasoning that had kept us here before but this time it was compared to how much we would lose if we sold the house... a number nearly twice as large.

Unfortunately, the holidays underperformance now means that is delayed. We will have to wait until at least spring, when we can sell the house at closer to what we owe and in the meantime I can concentrate on the shop, conventions and possibly a part time job, while Lindsay re-dedicates herself to writing. (Despite not releasing a book in over a year, her romance novels are still selling regularly if not in great numbers)

So this is kind of a non-update. But despite the setbacks, we are actually quite excited about the next few months. It would be more exciting if we were moving back to Poky and better still if our original plans of Washington were possible, but we aren't rushing to escape Maine quite as urgently and that should allow us some time to do it properly. Eat at Red's Eats one more time, do some sightseeing and photography, I plan to hit a number of conventions in the area. It should be good stuff.

The ROUS FAMILY -   

  

 

 

 

 

VACATIONLAND - Updates and Plans

Now Playing -  Don't Forget To Breathe by Bitter:Sweet

 

Life -  

I have been bad. Not just at updating this blog, but all of our blogs, social media sites and in my own writing. It's literally been over a month since I've written a single word on a novel and apart from some last edits on the print version of MR PALE, Lindsay and I have been totally out of the loop on the author end of our lives. There's an okay reason behind some of it, but I feel bad all the same.

Part of the reason it aggravates me is that I genuinely like writing, and I like positing on this blog. If nothing else, I actually think it makes a great little record of our lives and right now our lives are different than they've ever been.

I've said this before, but I'll say it again now – I'll try and be better.

So what's been going on? A ton. This year has been amazing for us in so many ways but in other facets it's actually been one of our hardest years ever. The opportunity to quit my retail job and for both of us to concentrate our efforts on Deeply Dapper and our various other pursuits has been a dream come true. But True Life is never quite as sweet as the dream. We've had some ROUGH months. Rough estimate, we need about $3000 a month in income to pay bills, feed the animals and keep the shop going. There were a few months in late spring/ early summer where we didn't make half that.

When I quit my job I did something somewhat ill-advised – I cashed in my retirement fund from Walgreens. The simple fact is that if things go the way we've planned, I could either use it now to work towards our future or save it and give up our dreams right now. It was a no-brainer to us – we're dreamers.

So that money has supported us at times and every time we sat in the red and needed some new item for the shop or a big load of supplies that had to come out of that savings, it sucked, pure and simple.

So there's that. Money troubles.

In addition, there's the sheer, unadulterated claustrophobia of two people, two large dogs and two cats going from a 1600 square foot house with a huge fenced yard, two sheds and a garage in Idaho to an 800 square foot tin box in the middle of nowhere. Add in the fact that we're both here ALL of the time and are at heart both very alone-time centric, this has been a Challenge. We did what we could – we bought Linz a writing cottage and we cordoned off our place into private zones but we live in a house that takes roughly twenty paces to reach from one end to the other. It takes the dog less than a second to run it.

After a few rough months of living here with the shop hitting a few speed bumps, we made a fateful choice. We needed to get out of Maine. Neither of us have any friends out here. Linz worked the overnight shift at a hotel and I was most of my peers' boss at Walgreens. We don't socialize, especially when we live 40 minutes from any socializing being done. And naturally, both of our best friends are the types that aren't really functional online. I have a few friends that started as online so I had them and I've always been rather content in solitude, but it was especially hard for Linz, especially when it came to writing inspiration and motivation. There are some things that friends can inspire and move along without ever realizing it.

Our plan to move was ambitious, no doubt. The real sticking point was one of the same things pushing us to move in the first place – this house. We bought it out here with the vague allusion that moving to rural Maine would be a smart step company ladder-wise and at the time I bit. We got a decent deal for the place but we still owed a lot on it and unlike a real house, a mobile home is more like a car when it comes to resale. We were gonna lose money. Probably a lot. Luckily, we didn't own the land, so we'd just have to sell the trailer and WEST OR BUST.  The plan was to wait for this coming Christmas, stockpile every penny we could and as soon as the snow receded, get the Hell out of Derry Maine.

One of our home improvement projects, replacing a cracked floor joist.

Unfortunately, once we did the smart thing – Crunch Numbers, things began to reveal themselves. Assuming we couldn't sell the trailer for much and factoring the costs associated with the move – rentals, trailers, gas, tolls, etc., it would cost us approximately $14,000. And that was just back to Idaho, to say nothing of our ultimate goals of getting past the potato and into the Pacific Northwest.

On the other hand, we actually had that much, give or take, between our retirement money and what we forecasted to make over the holiday, so it was doable.  Then things got a bit crappier out here. Maine seemed to close up over us and things seemed more oppressive. We had a few trademark issues with the shop and just plain bad months and we started to get desperate. We had to get out of Vacationland and back West where our hearts were.

Part of it was that we were starting to crunch the numbers in regards to this Christmas. Last year was huge for us and our shop was significantly larger on a day to day basis now. Christmas could be HUGE. And we knew no one out here. If we were to say.... head to Idaho BEFORE the holiday, what would be stopping us from setting up shop in Linz's folks' garage and hiring cheap slave labor under the guise of inviting friends and family over?  It sounded so great. Eating Christmas cookies and packaging switch plates with family and friends.

Enough that the idea seduced any other real logic out of our heads for a while. We started looking at places to buy post-Christmas, figuring out which supplies to buy now and have shipped to Idaho ahead of us...

Then, one day, we looked at each other and said “Crap, it's a good thing we don't run our shop like we run our lives, or we'd be bankrupt.”

For us to get out to Idaho before Christmas, it would not only take every penny of our savings, but we would likely have had to put all of our Christmas supplies on the credit card that we had just spent two years paying off. Additionally, we still owned our house in Idaho. My mom is working towards buying it, but regardless of how the shop does, there's no way we could buy a home in OR or WA while it was still in our name, especially with a new – owner operated business as our sole income. We also had about three months to sell everything in the house that wouldn't fit in a 5x8 trailer and get to Idaho with enough time to prep for the holiday sales to start in October.

SO to sum up, we would be living in the In-Laws basement, have thousands of dollars in debt, not a penny to our name, no way to buy a house to live in and we would be living in Pocatello Idaho... again.

Despite the obvious, we still almost went for it. The day we realized what we were doing was a very hard one for us. It was the same day we realized that if the shop kept having sales the way they were, I'd have to get a job before we left or our bills would tap out the money we'd need to get out of the house in the first place and we'd be stuck here anyway.

On the other hand, if we stayed here in Maine, we'd be in a house that's already being paid on, we'd have enough money in savings to get us to Christmas, buy a few home stuff we really needed and all of our supplies. We'd be in a place that we didn't....hate and we'd be better off financially than we have ever been... Sort of, anyway – at the time, our shop was still a question, but we figured that if worse came to worse, I could work part time during the summer to get us comfortably by in the lean months.

So once again, we did what we do best – we changed our plans. Sigh.

OUR NEW PLAN:

2013:

Deeply Dapper - Keep on trucking with Deeply Dapper on Etsy. At the same time, explore alternate avenues of revenue with the brand – www.deeplydapper.com as well as shops on Zibbet, Goodsmiths and eBay. Finally get DD.com up and running, including the Octopress branch, offering eBook formatting and cover work. Start prepping for Christmas '13 in earnest. Tighten up books and records, become an official business entity. Possibly hire a part time assistant to help out.

Writing – Still write, but let it take a back burner to an extent. We were trying to push it too much and our love of the craft was suffering. Our planned books for 2013 have been pushed back. Unfortunately.

Location – Stay here in the tin can in Maine. Not the best choice, but we've been working on making it more comfortable for us, doing some improvements we've put off, decorating and the like. We've also started exploring the area we live in slightly more.

The Crew – We found the boys a Day Care we could take them to for trips and the like – the person we did have caring for them moved further away and it wasn't fair to them or the dogs. More on that in a later post. On Lindsay and my end, we aren't doing much to change our situation... not yet. The simple fact is that we don't have time to find friends this time of year -XMAS is upon us. We have visits from family this fall too! Linz's folks will be here in about a week for 8 days and my brother makes his first trip to Maine at the end of September.

Addendum – My brother's trip had originally been designed as a bookend to the first leg of our move out West. The plan had been for him to come out, spend a week then he and I would load up Linz's car and drive it cross country with as much of our house as we could do without until the full move. We were looking forward to the cross country trip too. With our move cancelled, we're now planning to take the train back to Idaho, where I'll spend a bit of time. (Hopefully completing the sale of the house.)

2014:

Obviously, a lot of these plans are tentative, based largely on how our shop does over Christmas.

Deeply Dapper – DD goes CON! 2014 will see our shop represented in Comic Cons! We aren’t sure how many, but our first con is this November – in addition to our switch plates and stickers, we'll be selling our new line of geeky soaps. Along the way, I'll also be hitting up comic, game and video stores to see if they would be interested in selling our soaps at a retail level. My plans this year are to expand the brand on a wholesale level. Doing so could stabilize our shop to a tremendous extent. More on this to come! If it doesn't pan out, I'll likely try out a few part time jobs over the summer to supplement our income. There have always been jobs I've been vaguely curious about – this would be the ultimate chance to try them out.

Writing – Hopefully, Linz will be able to continue plugging away at her romance novels – despite no new releases or promotions, her novels keep selling, so we want to add to it. We also plan to release them in paperback. She's also working on a top secret novel series that she's been planning for a long time. We're also looking into writing groups in the area, both from an editorial assistance point of view and for that sweet, sweet human contact. I hope to release GRAVES and write the second MR PALE and MOONSTONE BAY novels. I HOPE. Ha-ha

Location – Here still. Keep calm and carry on. And pay off some of Linz's oppressive student loans. Mow the lawn.

We also hope to find time to start e3njoying the area the way a young work at home couple should be able to – Sex in the forest! Oh, I mean exploring the hundreds of old graveyards out here!  Our wholesale and conventions should be a help here, allowing us to phase out some of the extremely time intensive products from the shop.

The other thing is to pay off the house if possible so that when the move does come, it comes much, much cheaper.

The Crew – Our two main goals here are to free our minds from the stress of moving and where we'll be in a month, etc... And concentrate on enjoying our lives. We're finally making money off our interests and talents – we should be overjoyed! Linz will look for some friends; I'll be better about talking with mine. We'll get out more, be healthier, cook even better food, and lose weight.

The one event we are over the moon about in 2014 is that we are finally planning to take our belated honeymoon to Ireland. Aww yeah. That alone makes not moving a little sweeter.

Beyond that, the real plan is to make as much money from the shop and our writing as humanly possible so that in 2015, after the snows melt and while the air is still cool enough for a long road trip to be pleasant, we head west. For reals this time.

The ROUS FAMILY -   

  

 

 

 

 

Some Plans For The Future

Now Playing -   
She's So Fine by The Bodeans

Life -  

My adoring fans.

 

 So, though I'm now a Self-published author, with all of the fame and acclaim that comes with it, (None) I still have time to think about how I could be doing things better, or at least more effciently. Since a few months ago, when I split my blog off into a few factions, it's been a lot easier to post, and though I find myself posting less frequently, I seem to have attracted a few more readers by having a theme to the site they visit.

It's this frequency thing I plan to remedy, or try to, anyway. I've noticed a lot of bloggers have themed blogs each week, like Beard Of The Week, or Thursday Thoughts. It seems to work well for them and their readers seem to enjoy that kind of thing. So I sat down with a piece of paper and a pencil and mapped out a tentative plan for my posting... Let me know if you'd like to see anything different!

And remember, The Whispering Ferns is available on Smashwords, Barnes and Noble and the corrected version is up on Amazon too! And it's only three bucks!

The ROUS FAMILY -   

Saturdays - Photo Post -
This will be one of my "gimme" days, when I'll post a photo I've taken in the past and comment on it, or tell a story related to it.

Wednesdays - Weekly Update -
What's been happening in our lives, whether that's work, pets, road trips or random thoughts.

Sundays - Retro Sundays -
A time to share some of my favorite classic photos and videos from the past, when colors were black and white.

Tuesdays - Self Publishing Thoughts -
This is where you'll go if you're interested in publishing your own novels, or seeing how mine is going. I'll promise full disclosure and only a little bit of self-doubt.

Fridays - Wag The Blog -
A spotlight on other authors, editors and sites that I find diverting or inspiring.

Saturdays - The Weekly Update
Stories about Moonstone Bay, Character Profiles, News, Legends of the Northwest, drawings and more.
This website will be geared more towards the readers of my Moonstone Bay series, and will be all-ages.
 

Mondays - Art Sharing/Updates
Mondays will be the day to hit up Deeply Dapper for pics of works in progress, past pieces and things now available in the Etsy shoppe.

Thursdays -  1,000 Words, Abridged.
A chance to share a piece of art or art process that I find inspiring, impressive or just plain cool.

Reviews Of Unusual Size will continue to offer up the ROUS style of reviews on everything from books and movies to restaurants and Legos on a regular basis from a number of contributors.

  Lindsay Kiernan will update her site whenever she feels like it, and it is not my place to question when or how often that may be... But I'd like to see more installments of "Like The Used To..." immediately!

Our Plan II

The first tier of our plan is still very much a work in progress, and is mutating wildly every day, it seems. What started as a crazy idea during spring break has evolved into business plans, bank meetings, investor searching, scouting trips, blood, sweat & tears, and one might convincingly argue that we're no closer to starting up than we were then.

Obviously, one can't merely walk into a bank and request enough money to build a multi-million dollar complex in Washington, so Lindsay and I realized that we needed to start smaller, attempting to find a hotel, motel, or bed and breakfast that was small enough for us to be owner operators for our first step.

Of course, not just any place would do. There's a surprisingly large number of motels for sale across the united states, but we really wanted to find one that fit a few very specific criteria.

1- Size. We needed to find a place small enough to run it by ourselves, or with very minimal help. Our profit margin would be much higher then, and it would give us the satisfaction of being in charge and responsible for every aspect of the business. When we succeed, we want to rest easy knowing that it was because of us.

2- Location. Obviously, the location of the actual motel is important, but we also wanted to find a place in an area that we wanted to live, ideally near the Or/Wa border where we would like to eventually build our final business. We also looked towards the coast, not just from a personal enjoyment factor, but also secure in the knowledge that regardless of national conditions, the allure of the ocean will always be strong for vacationers.

3- Condition. While it would be fun to waltz into a property that's performing at peak, with everything decorated tastefully, clean, and well run, that isn't a property you can improve easily. We wanted to find a place that was functioning, but one that we could immediately improve and make our mark on. At the same time, we didn't want to try and revive a business that was floundering, building falling apart, bad management, bad reputation, something that would be such an uphill battle that we'd be exhausted long before we started turning a profit. Essentially, we needed to find a place that used to be loved. Somewhere that had owners that cared for and took care of the property, performing needed repairs, taking care of the customers, and keeping good records, but one that the owners have stopped caring about as much. Ove where the decor is a bit outdated, the beds old, the landscape neglected, with a shoddy website. Something we could create into a gem.

4- Price. Our biggest, and most persistant problem. We don't have a lot of money. If we did, we could walk in tomorrow, and have our pick of a dozen prime properties. Unfortunately, we're going into this with a lot of enthusiasm and ideas, but virtually no capitol. Our families are not well off, and especially in todays market, finding funding or investors for a hospitality business is next to impossible. Hotels pricing is also all over the place. A common problem seems to be places pricing themselves based on their percieved value, or on what they really make but don't report, both things that shoot ourselves and them in the foot when we go to a bank. Money. We've learned a lot of good, hard lessons about it's power lately.

So essentially, what we're looking for is a small, cheaply priced motel on the coast that is in good shape, but not too good, that reports all of it's income, is willing to deal, and has lots of room for improvement, allowing us to start in on our dreams for the future!

Sure, it sounds easy on paper...

Our Plan

Our plan, if it can be considered as such, is to eventually own a small sized, luxury themed hotel with extensive garden and wedding facilities in the Portland/Vancouver area. Obviously, that's easier said than done, and to accomplish this, we've devised an elaborate series of starts, middles and finishes that will take us away from everything we've ever known and hopefully, after a series of hills and valleys, land us in a place we love to be, in a job we love to do, and in a life we're proud to call ours.

This is something we've been working on for quite some time, and I'll be starting with some events that have happened quite a while ago, partly to protect the innocent and ourselves, partly to ease my sense of superstition about talking about certain events as they happen in fear of jinxing them, and partly because I just started this puppy, and a lot has happened!

First, a bit of background on us:

I'm currently a manager with a major nationwide chain of drug stores. I've been with them for 6 years now, and prior to that, I managed a gas station and a movie theater, at one point, I did all three simultaneously. I've been in management for around 12 years combined, all of it retail in some form or another. I enjoy reading voraciously, own over 2,000 DVDs, (Odds are, you'll see some reviews of books and movies pop up on here too...) and I draw, paint, sculpt and design, occasionally for actual money!

My wife, Lindsay, is a graduate of the University Of Montana, and currently works for the Best Western Hotel. In her time, she's worked at a pet store, a greenhouse, a craft store, and for her father's music store. (off and on continuously since she could work a vacuum, in fact) She enjoys reading, cross stitching, crafts, and computer programs. If not for this last thing, she could easily pass for a septuagenarian in print...

We have 4 pets, all of whom are treated like our kids. We have a 2 year old Newfoundland/Retriever mix, named Ludo, a year old Great Pyrenees puppy, Pooka, and two cats, sisters that were born on St. Patrick's Day. The black one is named Clover, and the Siamese is named Sassafras.

We currently live in Pocatello, ID, a city where we were both born and raised, a city where if you don't know someone and their entire history, you inevitably know someone who does. Some people consider this a good thing, others want to move to Oregon and open a Hotel.

All joking aside, while we have great respect for the city and it's history, it's just time for us to stake our own claim in the world, and we figure now is a good time to try something crazy that might work out better for us than we could possibly imagine.