Hi!

I got a ping from Deborah (who monitors the merch account) yesterday, saying that people have been emailing her to go "WHERE SHIRTS?" First, thank you for using the merch account rather than commenting here. I've asked people to do that, and people are doing it, and that's awesome.

Second, shirts are still being mailed. Only not right this second, because right this second, I am in New York, and my mother, who is home with the shirts, doesn't have access to my bank account to pay for the postage. I've indicated several times that shirts are still being mailed, both directly, and by saying things like "I am still mailing T-shirts" in other posts (usually giveaways). As soon as I get home, I will go to the post office again.

The post office, as it turns out, does not look favorably on my bringing more than twenty packages at a time. Ten if they're international.

So please, don't email until I have made a post saying "all the shirts have been mailed, yes, all of them." Until that point, the answer to "WHERE SHIRTS?" is "in my spare room, waiting to go for a ride in the car."

I have just received the email from the shirt shop (like, today) letting me know that the Wicked Girls and My Story Is Not Done shirts are finished! Hooray! This means they should be hitting my doorstep right around, oh, Thanksgiving.

I am not mailing shirts on Thanksgiving.

If you need to update your mailing address, now is the time. I will aim to have the mailing party to get these out in early December. Once we hit the party, your shirt goes to the address we have on file. Because opening the boxes will expose their contents to cat hair, I am not doing any mailing before the party. So I will not crack open five boxes of shirts to find your shirt in specific. I am very sorry about this. I am not going to mail hair-encrusted shirts to all our allergic people just to make a deadline I didn't agree to. This particular batch has taken a long time. Some of that is my fault (two months in Europe); some of it is not (people not responding to email/sending in their payments). Regardless, we're moving right along.

When shirts do start going out, it will be in large batches, without tracking. Tracking was not calculated as part of the initial postage cost, and is not something I can afford to do, either money or time-wise. If you have a huge, specific concern, please contact the merch address; we may be able to arrange for you to pay extra and get a tracking number. This will automatically move your shirt to the back of the queue, as it will require additional time at the post office.

Also, this is the appropriate time to note that I will not be doing further bespoke shirt runs. We've been as upfront as we can throughout this process about the fact that it makes no money, and that all updates will be posted here. If you look back through the "people make things" tag, you'll see that I have regularly updated when there was something to say. This hasn't stopped people from using every avenue they could find to ask for updates. It hasn't stopped people from mailing Deborah over and over again. I understand the need to know what's going on, but honestly, I said "this is the situation," and people didn't listen. I can't do things like this if people don't want to follow the rules and listen to the updates. I'm so sorry that there will not be a fourth print run.

But let's end on a positive note: shirts soon! And they should be gorgeous. I am so excited.

Thank you.

Hello!

So right now, Deborah is in the process of emailing anyone who is not marked "paid" on the big T-shirt spreadsheet, to confirm that they have a) sent payment and just not been marked off properly, b) they are planning to send payment within the next week, or c) they would like to cancel their shirt orders.

If a)...

I am in England! Because of this, my email access has been spotty, and my inbox is out of control. This means that it is 1,000% likely that payment notifications have been missed (especially since PayPal doesn't always mark them clearly, which means doing an inbox search for "PayPal" is not always reliable). If you have sent payment and you receive an email, nothing is wrong. Your order has not been deleted. Just reply to Deborah with your confirmation number, and we'll get things updated.

If b)...

We really need to get final payments in so we can submit this order. If you receive an email and have not sent payment previously, please follow Deborah's instructions and get right on that. I'd really rather not have to return a bunch of late payments because we've already sent in the shirt order without you.

If c)...

That's cool! Situations change and stuff moves around and all. Just reply and let Deborah know that you need to cancel your order, and we'll take you off the spreadsheet.

Please remember that I have very little contact with the admin side of things: if you have a question about your order, email the merch address, rather than commenting here.

Shirts soon!

I just got back from Jordancon, aka, "an excuse to hang out in Roswell, Georgia with awesome people for four days." I've never been to Georgia in the late spring/early summer before. It was exciting and strange and new, and these are all things that I treasure, regardless of the circumstances surrounding them. Hooray!

Thanks to my uncanny ability to sleep on planes, I don't really remember the flight to Georgia; just getting up ridiculously early to travel to the airport, waking up once in midair to eat my lunch, and then touching down on the other side of the country. I was worried about finding the car that had come to collect me. The car solved this problem by containing Michael Whelan, who waved enthusiastically when he spotted me. Many hugs were had.

I ate dinner with the guests and staff, retreated to my room, watched Glee, wrote, and slept. Friday morning, a very sweet lady named Michelle drove me to breakfast (since my West Coast clock had kept me in bed until the end of East Coast breakfast hours). In the car, she said, "You smell nice. What's your perfume?"

"Old Roswell Cemetery," I said.

It's a funny world.

The con marched on from there. I met awesome people (John Hartness and Delilah Dawson and Alex Bledsoe, oh my). I spent time with people I already knew and adored (Patty and Deborah and Andy and Michael and Audrey and Indigo, hooray). I talked on panels, sang karaoke, critiqued new writers, and bought cupcakes for half the convention. And then I went back to the airport, and came home.

I love my life sometimes. Anything that lets me spend a beautiful weekend in the Georgia summer can't be entirely bad.

As of five minutes ago, the very last shirt to have been returned to me due to mailing issues (in this case, the person changed addresses) has been re-sent. (If you're wondering if this is you, the initials are "JA.") I now have no shirts from printing #1 waiting to be delivered. The lovely Deborah has emailed everyone who reported non-delivery of their shirts to see whether this has been resolved. As soon as we hear back from them, we'll be submitting printing #2 to the shirt shop for production.

The shipping plans for printing #2 are much more organized than they were for printing #1, because we can be taught. We'll be having an all-day shirt packing party, with typeset labels, culminating in becoming an urban legend at the local post office. ("And then they came in with three hundred envelopes...the horror...") I can't guarantee that we won't have another "some of the shirts are missing" issue, and while the shirt shop dealt with this quickly, it did create some printing delays. Still, I will keep you posted, and the goal is a two-day drop for all shirts.

Thank you very much for your patience, and please let Deborah know if you have any questions or problems.

(As always, this was written by Deborah, who is awesome and amazing, and can answer all your questions.)

Alright, guys, here we go:

YOU NOW HAVE FIVE DAYS TO PLACE YOUR ORDER FOR A WICKED GIRLS SHIRT.

Orders close this Friday, May 18th, 2012. At 11:59 PM PST, just to make it all official.

Now, to crib from my earlier announcements:

Everyone who has confirmed their Wicked Girls shirt order has been sent a final invoice with payment instructions.

There are currently a few people who have not confirmed their orders; you have until May 18th to do so.

Everyone who placed an order for a Wicked Girls shirt—and had that order acknowledged—should have received an order confirmation email.

If you did not receive a confirmation email, please do the following:

1. Check your spam filter. (Related, please make sure seananmerch at gmail is on your approved senders list.)
2. Check your comment on the original post and make sure I didn't need more information from you.
3. Check your comment on the original post and make sure there are no typos in your email address.

If you're missing the email and I need either corrected or more information from you, please respond in the comments on the original post. (Not this post. The original post.)

DO NOT send unsolicited email to the seananmerch email address. Unless we are already in contact, it will get lost in the shuffle for quite some time.

Thank you!

It's today's helpful shirt update! With an addendum: we have received a few notifications of missing batch-one shirts, and I will be dealing with those as soon as I get home. Since I'm in New York right now, I can't do anything to find out what's up, or whether your envelope has been returned to me. So please continue to be patient, and I'll get on it ASAP. International folks, please continue to wait before reporting a missing shirt, as we asked for a delay of up to May 18th to allow for customs.

And now, Deborah...

Everyone who has confirmed their Wicked Girls shirt order has been sent a final invoice with payment instructions.

There are currently a number of people who have not confirmed their orders; you have until May 18th to do so.

Everyone who placed an order for a Wicked Girls shirt-- and had that order acknowledged-- should have received an order confirmation email.

If you did not receive a confirmation email, please do the following:

1. Check your spam filter. (Related, please make sure seananmerch at gmail is on your approved senders list.)
2. Check your comment on the original post and make sure I didn't need more information from you.
3. Check your comment on the original post and make sure there are no typos in your email address.

If you're missing the email and I need either corrected or more information from you, please respond in the comments on the original post. (Not this post. The original post.)

DO NOT send unsolicited email to the seananmerch email address. Unless we are already in contact, it will get lost in the shuffle for quite some time.

Thank you!

I'm trying not to be the all-Hugos, all-the-time channel right now (believe me, it's hard), but there is something I really wanted to talk about, and that's my nomination in the Best Related Works category. Wicked Girls, the CD I released in January 2011, has been nominated for the brass ring. This is the first time a single-artist filk CD has been nominated for the Hugo Awards...except for where it's not a single-artist CD. My name may be the only thing on the cover, but it's not the only name that was involved with the project. And that's what makes this so amazing. Because Wicked Girls is the thing I did with some of the people I love best in all this world, and I think that it shows. I really do.

This is the album where half the songs were written specifically so Vixy could sing them with me, or specifically for Amy's fiddle breaks. This is the album where my "I love you more than fairy tales" songs for my friends all got recorded, "Wicked Girls" and "Mother of the Crows" and "The True Story Here" and so many others. It was an amazing experience, recording this. And I credit that entirely to the people who recorded it with me.

Vixy, who sings with me on almost every track. Amy, whose screaming electric fiddle is the first primary instrumentation on the album. Kristoph, who tolerantly listened to me trying to explain what I wanted, and then gave me a hundred times more. Mary, and Betsy, and Sooj, who took the time to come to the studio and make things amazing. They put the heartbeat into the songs. Paul, who I loved first and best as a guitarist. Tony, who makes magic with strings. Margaret, who harps like it's going to be banned tomorrow. And others, and others, and others, forever.

Tara designed the cover; Beckett designed the liner notes. Mia made the pendants that inspired almost half the songs. Deborah listened, and loved, and helped in a thousand ways, as did Kate, and Cat, and all the members of my scattered family.

After more than thirty years, the filk community has representation on the Hugo ballot, and it's for an album that contains members of Southern filk, Midwest filk, Pacific Northwest filk, and California filk. And that is amazing. I am amazed.

I think I'm going to be amazed for a while.

Deborah sent me the following and asked that I post it for y'all to reference. As I am an obliging blonde, I have done so. Here you go!

***

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Everyone who placed an order for a Wicked Girls shirt—and had that order acknowledged—should have received an order confirmation email.

If you did not receive an email, please do the following:

1. Check your spam filter. (Related, please make sure seananmerch at gmail is on your approved senders list.)
2. Check your comment on the original post and make sure I didn't need more information from you.
3. Check your comment on the original post and make sure there are no typos in your email address.

If you're missing the email and I need either corrected or more information from you, please respond in the comments on the original post. (Not this post. The original post.)

DO NOT send unsolicited email to the seananmerch email address. Unless we are already in contact, it will get lost in the shuffle for quite some time.

Payment instructions will begin going out today to those who have confirmed their orders.

On a final note, here's a key for how we've been classifying the shirt styles:

GIRLY STANDARD (or Girly S) = The standard girl-cut T.
GIRLY V = The girl-cut with a shallow v-neck.
LARGER GIRLY = The larger girl-cut T.
STANDARD = The unisex T.

***

Yay, shirts!

The lovely and charming Deborah, who is handling the administrative side of the current Wicked Girls T-shirt batch, has two very important announcements for everyone who has ordered, or is thinking about ordering. Namely:

1. Invoicing will start on Sunday, so no inquiries necessary until after we say they've been sent out.
2. People should check the comments for queries about their orders—there are a couple of people who have been queried without responding, but LJ may be being a tool and not delivering comments.

So basically, you haven't been asked to pay yet because no one has been asked to pay, and you should check your original comment to be sure that Deborah isn't asking you important questions which might delay fulfillment.

And that is all for now.

Because nothing says "Seanan has a lot on her plate right now" like me deciding it's time for a project, I am going back to the printer for a second limited batch of "Wicked Girls" T-shirts. How limited? "The number of orders I receive, plus maybe a few extras, but I don't make any promises"-limited.

The design, thanks to the ever-lovely Tara:



This is a mock-up; the actual shirts will use that design, but will vary a little. We are using the same local shop that we used for the first batch, and they are remarkably flexible about everything. I love them so. Here are some real people wearing real shirts:

http://a.yfrog.com/img864/1994/wdmqi.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarahandbrian/6879521872/
http://pics.livejournal.com/tithenai/pic/0005p48p
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/s720x720/402268_10100181507175304_34311648_43656648_461649944_n.jpg
https://twitter.com/#!/gienahghurab/status/183599757132955652/photo/1

We are offering four types of shirt, as follows:

The standard girl-cut T (click here to view the basic shirt) is available in small through 2XL. We can print with visible text on black, dark chocolate, dark gray, heather gray, indigo, kelly, light olive, midnight navy, plum, purple rush, red, royal, scarlet, shocking pink, or turquoise. We cannot promise visibility on any other color, as white text is hard to read on light-colored shirts.

The girl-cut T with a shallow V-neck (click here to view the basic shirt) is available in small through 2XL. We can print with visible text on black, dark gray, heather gray, indigo, kiwi, or plum. We cannot promise visibility on any other color, as white text is hard to read on light-colored shirts.

The larger girl-cut T (click here to view the basic shirt) is available in small through 4XL. We can print with visible text on athletic maroon, black, cardinal, charcoal, dark chocolate brown, dark green, kelly, navy, orange, purple, red, or royal. We cannot promise visibility on any other color, as white text is hard to read on light-colored shirts.

The unisex T (click here to view the basic shirt) is available in small through 6XL. We can print with visible text on athletic maroon, black, brown, cardinal, charcoal, dark chocolate brown, dark green, dark heather gray, deep marine, fiery red, forest green, kelly, navy, olive, orange, purple, red, rich red or royal. We cannot promise visibility on any other color, as white text is hard to read on light-colored shirts.

HOW THIS IS GOING TO WORK.

If you want to buy a shirt, comment here with:

a) how many shirts you want.
b) which size and style each shirt should be.
c) which color each shirt should be.
d) an alternate color, in case your first choice is out of stock.*
e) your email address.

(*Colors for which we receive fewer than three requests will be automatically considered "out of stock.")

I will add your information to our ongoing spreadsheet, and Deborah will contact you to arrange immediate payment. Shirts are $20 for sizes S through 2XL, and $25 for sizes 3XL through 6XL. Shipping outside of the United States is an additional $5 per two shirts. (So one size S would be $25, two would be $45, and three would be $70.)

Orders will close on May 18th; the goal is to have the order submitted to the printer by June 1st. Anyone who has not replied to three requests for payment will be deleted from the spreadsheet at that time.

ETA: I understand security concerns, but if you want a shirt, you must provide an email address. The actual spreadsheet is being generated by the lovely Deborah, who cannot access any more private mechanism you may decide to use for contacting me. No email address on the entry, no shirt.

10. Well, that's that: I am officially out of "skip days" until after March. My friend Debbie rather unexpectedly pinged me Tuesday to say that she would be in San Francisco starting Wednesday and would I have dinner with her? So we had dinner (and I dragged her along on the usual round of Wednesday errands, because there's "taking a skip day" and then there's "committing professional suicide"), and now I have to make word count every day from now to March 15th. Yes, that includes the days when I'm at conventions. I have no regrets.

9. ...okay, I have one regret: I am so far behind on everything I watch that it's not even funny. The only shows I've managed to keep up with are Fringe and Glee, and that's because I prioritize them in bitey, bitey fashion. Because I have to preserve my questionable sanity somehow.

8. I'm pondering a post on the financial realities of the Hugo Awards and the electronic voting packet, but for the moment, if you are eligible to nominate for the 2012 Hugos, and you haven't, why not nominate now? WorldCon isn't getting any further away.

7. Tax time is approaching. This means I need to clean my entire house, so that I can get my receipts into something vaguely approximating order. Oh, goodie. It also means it's time to make my annual pledge to set up a better filing system than "the bottom of my purse is full of receipts and Luna Bar wrappers, look in there." Although my faintly peanut butter-scented receipts are always nice.

6. Ryan is coming to visit! Which is wonderful, and will lead to much hugging and adoration (and also to the dry cleaning of the guest room duvet). Also much doll photography, since Ryan has promised to take some pictures of my unnervingly glossy-eyed collection for the edification of all those who think it can't possibly be that bad trying to sleep in my room.

5. I fly to Seattle tomorrow for Conflikt, where I am doing absolutely nothing official. It's going to be great. I get to spend the weekend hugging my friends, working on the books I have coming due, and going to Barnes and Noble to sign books. Plus the hotel is walking distance from the airport, so no one has to get up at four a.m. to drive me. That'll be nice for everybody. Well, except me. I still have to get up at four a.m.

4. I want to go back to Disney World. I find myself grumbling slightly at my taxes because I know that self-employment income (i.e., "writing") means that I'll be paying more than the cost of a really nice Disney World vacation. I actually like paying taxes, except for the "finding my receipts" part, but sometimes the sheer amount of tax that I have to pay makes me weep for Babylon.

3. Mailing is ongoing! At this point, there are only a few shirts I can't find, and I'm hoping they're buried under the more popular styles/colors. I got a list of inquiries on status from Deborah this morning, and I'll be answering her tonight, but really, patience is king. I'm doing this alone. Any future batches of shirts will be super-limited, because even aside from the part where some people are annoyed (and I'm sorry about that), I just can't process 300+ shirts in 30+ size/color/style combinations in anything resembling a timely manner. Like, it is physically impossible to do that and go to my day job and not miss my deadlines. And sadly, "pays the mortgage" and "makes my publishers happy" beat everything else.

2. I have been playing a little tappy game called "Pocket Frogs" during my admittedly limited free time. I don't think the game's designers intended it to be played quite like this, since I have a very "gotta catch 'em all" approach, but it makes me happy. As does slowly watching the breed counters go to 100% as I breed all 368 possible individuals.

1. Zombies are love.

So as I get ready to leave, I begin addressing the administrative funtimes that are my inbox. Which leads us to today's exciting question:

"Why hasn't my _____________ been mailed?"

This question comes in three flavors: books, shirts, and ARCs. If you are currently expecting a book from me, it has been mailed. If you don't have it, it's either in transit, or the post office has eaten it. I sadly don't control the post office, and I can't afford to pay for confirmation on every package I send, so unless you sent me money for postage that included tracking, I don't have a way of knowing where it wound up. I'm sorry.

If you are currently expecting a shirt from me, we just received the last box from the printer. It's a small shirt shop, and they were as overwhelmed as I was by the size of the response. We're still packaging and mailing, and will finally be able to start packing and mailing out those shirts that previously didn't exist. Thank you very much for your patience. I can look up individual people on the list, but I ask that you email Deborah at the merchandise account, not me directly; Deborah has the files, and time spent digging through the list of shipped shirts for your name is time I'm not spending putting shirts in envelopes.

If you are currently expecting an ARC from me...here's where things get fun. See, my email? Is apparently broken. As in, "no longer accepting mail from my website contact form." So the addresses of the winners of our last contest never reached me. If you're reading this, please try sending your address again, via LJ messenger this time; my webmaster, Chris, is trying to isolate and repair the problem, but I have no idea how long that's going to take. For the moment, assume that if you've emailed me, I didn't get it.

Because administrative chaos right before a week in Florida is so totally what I needed this year. Happy holidays!

First:

I have leveled up in Real Author. How do I know? I know because I actually managed to miss a publication date. Not a deadline; a publication. As in, "something got released, and I completely missed it." So! My poem, "Clockwork Chickens," was published in issue #25 of Apex Magazine, which previously published the stories "Dying With Her Cheer Pants On" and "The Tolling of Pavlov's Bells." Hooray!

You can read my poem here, for now. Apex takes down back issues in a sort of rolling pattern, so you should read soon, or better yet, buy the e-book download of the issue so that you can keep it forever and for always. Apex is a company that does good work, and they keep buying my stuff, which naturally endears them to me. I would like it if they would keep doing that. And also, I like this poem.

In other news, I am safely home from Ohio, and attempting to figure out where I left my head. I sadly suspect it may have been in the Houston airport, where I was so hungry that I ate an entire cheeseburger in approximately four bites and an inhale. I think I scared the waitress. I know I counted my fingers when I was done. Just in case. So I am tired and I am grumpy, and I am getting tired of being tired.

I am almost done packing the most recent run of poster orders, and should be getting those in the mail this week. Better yet, the lovely Deborah has finished collating all the T-shirt orders, and I am working with the printer now to get everything submitted and start the production process. We wound up with over three hundred shirts on the order. My house is going to be one hell of a shipping party.

I am also almost done with the technical revisions on Blackout, which I will be shipping off to my publisher Real Soon Now. And thus do I buy myself time to finish the other three books I need to be working on, and perhaps someday, one day, take a nap.

Onwards and upwards.

Zzz.

So, as you may have noticed, I am currently stretched...well, pretty thin. I am thus bringing on some help here in the salt mines, to make sure things keep running smoothly. Yaaaay!

The lovely Deborah (talkstowolves) has been handling the "Wicked Girls" T-shirt orders, which are almost ready to go to the printer, and will now be stepping in to help with basic website administration work. She'll be updating the news and appearances, fixing typos, and making adjustments to pages as needed. This will free me up to actually get some of the major things done in a more timely manner.

Also! While I will continue trying to answer all comments on this journal in a vaguely timely fashion, it...isn't always so possible. To help prevent confusion, I thought I'd give you the names of the folks who are Fully Authorized (tm) to answer direct questions on my behalf.

porpentine does my website code, and can answer any and all questions about how it works.
talkstowolves and vixyish do a lot of administrative duties for me, and can answer practically all questions about what the hell I think I'm doing.
aiglet has the best grasp of my schedule of anyone who isn't me, and can usually answer questions about where I am and when I'll be back.

In short, if you ask a question, and one of these four people answers it, you can take their answer as coming from me. (I realize there will always be less general questions, like "where did you get that icon?" and "hey, didn't I see you last Tuesday at the Gwar concert?" But there's been some confusion lately, stemming from people asking questions and then getting them answered eight ways, by eight different folks. I'm just trying to make it all a little less bewildering. As if that's possible.)

Thank my brave volunteer staffers, and do not throw things at them. They bite.