I Met Moe!

 

So, I'm at the big flea market over the weekend and I see the above book on a dealer's table.  I ask how much it is and he says "Ten bucks."  It's a small book, only 44 pages, so the price is a little steep for me and I pass.  The name rings a bell with me, though.  I look over the back of the book and see that it's about selling in the kind of vendor mall set-up where I have my booths, as opposed to the traditional flea market, like the one we're standing in.  At that point, my curiosity is getting the better of me, so I have to ask:  "Are you the Moe who used to have all those spaces at Dixie Trading Post?"  Sure enough, he's that Moe!

The first time I ever went to the Peddlers Mall where I have my booth, probably about 30% of the space was used by one vendor--Moe.  Pretty much the entire back corner of the store was his booth.  Eventually, the Peddlers Mall left that building and moved to its current location.  Shortly after that, I rented my first spot there.  Moe stayed in the old building and helped the owners open their own mall there.  He stayed there for a while and then moved on.  They even used to advertise that the mall featured "Moe's Backroom."

In other words, he's been around a while and knows his stuff.  His book is designed as a guide for folks looking to enter the market, so to speak.  We talked for a bit and he told me that the book was too basic for me, since I've been doing this for a while now.  He said that he was trying to share some of the mistakes that he made in the beginning so that other people could avoid them. 

I can actually think of a few people who would have benefited from having a book like this.  Too many people start a booth without any plan whatsoever and leave in a huff after a few months when they aren't even making their rent.  If you're interested in reading it, you can order it from the publisher here or get it from Amazon here.

 Of course, you don't have to lay out ten bucks for a book to learn this stuff.  I'm planning a whole lot more "This is how we do it" posts for the next few months.  There are some other really good blogs on the topic as well.  Everybody comes at the topic from a slightly different angle, but there is lots of good info out there, if you want it.

Monday Rambles

Fall has certainly fallen in this part of the world.  We've had wonderfully cool-ish, fall-ish temperatures for several days now.  I am in heaven!  I live for this time of year.  Not too cold.  Not too hot.  I just love it!  Too bad it only lasts for a little while.

I spent the weekend cat-sitting, so I didn't really get out and do any yard sales.  I decided to spend some time reading instead.  Actually, I've been doing a lot of that lately.  I can take one bus right from my front door to the latest incarnation of my work gig and back again, so I have a lot of time for reading.

If you are a whodunnit fan, I highly recommend MC Beaton's Hamish MacBeth series for its warmth, wit, and clever plotting.  Unfortunately, her Agatha Raisin series is an acquired taste that I have yet ti acquire.  Another favorite is anything by the wonderful Sharyn McCrumb.  The mysteries usually turn out to be incidental to the overall plot, but her stories are so fabulously hilarious and delightful that I really don't mind at all.  Currently, I'm elbow-deep in Luis Miguel Rocha's The Last Pope.  I've not quite warmed to it just yet.  I think after this one, I'm going to shift gears back into some manga or graphic novels.  I've got a little stack that I want to burn through and get to a booth.

Sales have been nice lately.  The fall bounce is in full swing.  I like that!  I did have a couple of lag days last week, but things picked right back up.  I'm heading to the Peddlers Mall today to set up this year's killer Halloween display, just as soon as I dig all the stuff out of the shed.  I've sold most of the Halloween/Fall stuff that I've already set out already, so it's time to go all out.  I'm going to try and remember to both take the camera to get some pics and then to actually take them.  It seems so simple, but I screw it up so often.

I hope some of you are checking into the YesterNook blog.  I'm updating on Tuesday and Friday over there.  

Revealed At Last! My Deep, Dark Secret!

Well, one of them at any rate.  If I let them all out of the bag, I'd probably then have to round up the seven or eight of you who actually read this blog and have you eliminated or something.  Can't be letting all our skeletons dance out of the closet now, can we?

And what is this horrible secret?

I read girly manga!!!!!

Oh, the humanity!


This is what happens when Sailor Moon is the show that turns you on to anime.

Book Report: Feb 2011

I'm trying to encourage myself to read more this year.  I love books.  I've got a ton of them.  I need to read more of them.  Thankfully, since the booth came along, I do much less buying for myself, even when it comes to books.

I'm always telling Keith that I'm so glad I know how to read.  It's brought me great pleasure over the years.  I just wish I had more time to do it.

Here's what I read in February and what I thought about it.  I'm hoping that tracking them this way will encourage me to both read and blog more.  We'll see.  By the way, I totally stole this idea from ottermom.

Berlin: City of Smoke by Jason Lutes:  An old favorite.  I picked up this volume a couple of years ago when it first came out, but only got around to reading it just now.  Lutes' evolving story of the last days of the Weimar Republic in Germany remains as engrossing as ever.  His storytelling style is one of the most cinematic in modern comics.  After you read a page for content, you almost have to go back and reread it to study his technique.  Amazing.  I've got my doubts whether this one will finish or not--there are supposed to be nine volumes, but it's taken a decade or more to get the first two out--but I'll be there to enjoy the ride for as long as it lasts.


Age of Bronze: Betrayal by Eric Shanower:  Another volume from a favorite series that had been sitting on my shelves for too long.  Shanower's art is packed with exquisite detail and his re-telling of the TrojanWar saga is compelling reading.  There are seven volumes projected in the series.  After a decade of publishing, three are out, so I'm hopeful this one might finish.  The individual comics seem to come out a couple of times a year.


The Oxford Murders by Guillermo Martinez:  "Intellectual" thriller and murder mystery that lays everything out in plain sight, but twists the reader's perceptions of events so that the finale comes as a complete surprise.  I loved this one.

Spider-Girl:  Avenging Allies by Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz:  I thought the art was weak--too many distorted faces and distended torsos for my taste, but greatly enjoyed the story.  I had long since passed out of super-hero comics when this one came along, so I really didn't know the character, only the trials and tribulations of the book's publishing history.  But, this was fun!  Real fun!  Like reading comics used to be.  I'll be keeping an eye out for other volumes of this one that I can snag cheap.


The Authority Vol 1:  Relentless by Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch:  The Authority has been around a while now, but this was my first exposure to them.  I like Ellis' work, but this book shows up one of his primary weaknesses--his inability to edit himself.  I know from being on his mailing list a while back that he's constantly coming up with one or two sentence ideas for story elements, then filing them away for future use.  This book reads like he just dumped hi idea drawer out and threw in whatever he could find, but didn't quite develop anything beyond his first thoughts.  Not to mention the repetition of certain plot elements between the stories in the book.  Did we really need to see the team fight off two back to back invasions of Los Angeles?


Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist by MC Beaton:  Most disappointing book I read in February.  I love Beaton's Hamish McBeth mysteries, so I had high hopes for this.  Agatha Raisin is spoiled and obnoxious and leves me cold.  Worse yet, the murder was pretty much incidental to the whole book.  I was kind of getting drawn into Agatha's issues with her ex-fiance by the end of the book, but I'm on the fence about whether or not I'll read anything else in this series.

The Book of Lost Souls by J Micheal Stracynski and Colleen Doran:  This one reads like a rejected submission for a SyFy original series.  Doran's moody art is nice, but the stories are flat and predictable.

Yotsuba&! vols 1 and 2 by Kiyohiko Azuma:  Quirky little book that was a big hit with the manga readers a while ago.  I can see why.  The book is genuinely funny, with a main character that is in turn annoying and endearing.  Imagine a Bart Simpson or Crayon Shin Chan, but as an innocent.  I thought the second volume was better than the first because the comedic timing was sharper.  I'll be looking for more of this one.

Le Portrait de Petite Cossette vols 1 and 2 by Asuka Katsura and Cossette House Aniplex:  Two volume manga series about a man who becomes obsessed with an antique portrait of a young girl and is eventually led to his demise by her spirit.  Creepy and disturbing.

It really astounds me that the majority of my reading for February was graphic novels.  I've been laying off of comics for so long now, that it's almost like I was never a comics fan at all.  I just kind of drifted away from them.  What's even more surprising to me was how much I enjoyed reading them.  It's like comics were fun again like they used to be before I got involved in comics fandom.  I'm starting to think that it was fandom I was burning out on, not comics.  We'll see how this trend holds up for next month, although I sure thought I read more books without pictures last month.

I'm not in at the moment...

Keith and I have headed to the wild, wild north to go camping for the weekend. I'm looking forward to hanging out and relaxing. I've got a small stack of books to read. I'm such a bore when I camp. While I might get out and take a brief hike, I'm pretty much content to sit around by the tent and read. Uninterrupted reading time is such a luxury these days. Even when I'm the only one at home, I have a hard time just sitting and reading when I can see everything around me that needs doing instead.

So, I've got a couple of whodunnits packed up and a couple of graphic novels, so I'll see you when I get back.

In the meantime, enjoy The Chills enjoying their leather jackets: