Our store is turning 15 years old this November. The mere fact of that still astounds me. I keep asking myself, How did that happen? And how has time gone by so incredibly quickly? While I’m not a fan of a decade and half zooming by, I’m loving our author line-up for the next 10 weeks of celebration. We’ve got Terry Brooks on Sunday and then we have a week off and after that it’s pretty much a dead run with events – sometimes two on one day! – until November 19th.
So, how are we gearing for this massive flurry of events? Well, it’s amazing what a dash of panic can do for a staff that’s really organized. We are now hyper-organized, really, it’s a little scary to me. I’m more of a “fly by the seat of my pants” person, and while this style makes me thrive, it makes my staff more than a little insane.
It’s been a very interesting education for me to see what’s making all  the staffers anxious about this slew of events. One thing that is concerning to them is what to do if Elizabeth or I are unavailable. This never occurred to me as something to worry about. But it was a huge concern for them. We created a fairly easy fill-in system so every event has a point person who will effectively run the event, from introducing the author to getting the right number of books signed for stock.
Their need for great organization forced me to do something I’ve actively resisted for 15 years: creating a real events checklist. I must say, it felt really good to get the list done. Now that I have something to refer to, I can happily see that we’re farther along than I assumed, and this is a good thing, because I hadn’t realized that my anxiety was starting to get pretty high when I saw all the events on our calendar.
So instead of not falling asleep because I’m counting which authors need event books ordered, I can go back to counting sheep and sleeping like a baby.