Facebook fan page up

Today I have taken more pictures of one piece of jewelry than I have in the entire rest of my life. I'm still not perfect at it - not even close, but I managed to go from this:

which is too dark and glare-y, to this:

to this:

which still isn't perfect, but I'm just about cross-eyed from the whole process, and should really pay some attention to my family now.

But I did get my Facebook fan page for my jewelry up. Head on over and join!

Etsy shop will open March 15.

By March 15th I'll have everything in order, including a PO Box and shipping supplies. I know I'm jinxing myself there. If I launched the shop tomorrow before I had my shipping all set up, the store would sell out in five minutes. By having the required resources, I'll be lucky if I make a sale in the first three months. Oh well.

Here's a picture of some hair accessories I made for my sister-in-law, Tianne, which I'll send out today, unless Tianne sees this, hates it, and emails me before I get to the post office. I'm practicing taking pictures various places and think I may need to rig a light box. Anyone with more experience than I, please feel free to give advice. This picture is taken where there is the most natural light anywhere in the apartment, right at noonday. You can see how far north Britain is, no? I think the crystal still looks too dull and the picture could use a lot more light.

In the next couple of days I'll get a fan page set up on Facebook, and there I'll upload pictures of items that'll go in the shop. The URL for the Etsy shop is www.etsy.com/shop/EmilyMah.

Well, here's one bracelet...

I did not actually play World of Warcraft today, but instead ran all over town doing errands and getting things like a cable for my printer. I did, however, get my computer all set up, which means I can upload pictures. So, here, at the very end of the day, I've managed to get images of one piece off my camera, so here they are. This is a bead mosaic bangle bracelet I made. I had to make it twice in order to get the technique right, but it turned out okay in the end. These photos haven't been touched up and the camera was on the wrong setting, etc. but you get the gist.

I have a monitor! And a printer!

Those both arrived today, so I'm hoping my wonderful, dear, beloved husband will hoist them over to the desk tonight so that I can start using them to play World of Warcraft! Oh yeah, and to upload pictures of the jewelry I've made and design an Etsy shop banner and stuff like that too.

It's going to feel so odd tomorrow not to have to stay home, waiting for various delivery people. I'll be able to go run errands and walk around the neighborhood. (But let's be honest here, I'll probably be playing World of Warcraft.)

In my defense, let me say I did hit 65,000 words on the novel today. I've earned some goof off time.

The Computer Is Here!

Now I just need for the monitor and printer to arrive. Well, the printer isn't a necessity right now, but the monitor kind of is. They should be here in the next couple of days.

Meanwhile, the novel's at 65k, and still growing. This is loooong for me. I have this paranoia that I won't be able to keep the structure in my head and that I'll lose track of what I said where and end up with just gobbledygook. Yeah, yeah, I heard you mutter, "how is this different from what she normally writes?" Very funny.

When the monitor gets here, I'll be able to start work on my Etsy shop. I'm trying to make a piece of jewelry a day to build up inventory, and I've applied for a PO Box. I'd love to get the shop open this week, but realistically, I think it'll be next or the week after. I've ordered some shipping supplies and things like that and I still need to design my shop banner and avatar and all that fun stuff. I'm glad I owned my own business before, as a lawyer. Makes the technicalities less frightening, so I can just have fun with this new endeavor.

The computer saga continues

Well, today we're buying a monitor and printer, just in case we actually have a use for them next week. Our computer remains in the custody of British customs as they decide whether or not they will let us have it without charging us VAT. Last week we got the ransom letter, and I called in to explain that it was an old computer that we brought with us on a move, not a new computer we bought from the States to get around VAT.

The person I spoke to emailed a form to Trevor for him to fill out stating this was so. Only, when I messaged Trevor a little while later, he hadn't gotten the form. A couple of hours after that, he got it sorted out; they'd emailed it to the wrong address.

Trevor printed the form, brought it home, and we filled it out. Then he scanned it and emailed it along with a letter from his university that was required.

The next day we learned that the recipient of said email only downloaded the university letter and missed the other attachment, so they didn't have our form. So on Thursday, Trevor re-emailed the form. They should have it now and the fate of our machine should be decided soon. And then it should be delivered. Maybe Monday?

I'm glad I got into jewelry making before we left. As cliche as it sounds, I really do go a little nuts if I don't have something creative to do alongside writing, and for a long time that was digital scrapbooking, which requires said computer. The hypocritical thing is that I tend to mock people who claim that they just can't live without their art, but honestly, it's because I think 9 out of 10 of those people are lying. It's an act put on to appear artsy, because for some reason people think it's cool to have this type of obsessive disorder. I don't tend to go on and on about how I need my art. I'm too busy doing it, I guess. Speaking of which....

Going to church

I got about 5,000 words written today and did most of the work on a bracelet I'm making (I'm trying to teach myself how to do mosaics with beads and wire), and it's a little while until Trevor gets home, so I figured I'd blog a little more about our move.

When we were looking at places, friends of ours asked if we were taking into consideration what congregation we'd attend. We just explained that wherever we chose to live would be in some ward boundaries or other. People seemed shocked that we would be assigned to a congregation, rather than picking one. Me, I never belonged to a church where I could pick a congregation, so I think the concept of doing so is odd. I'm used to going to church with a bunch of people I may or may not want to be around for extended periods of time. I've been in wards where people declare that all Democrats are evil and that environmentalism is of the devil, so suffice it to say, I can keep the doctrine and the people separate in my mind.

As soon as we knew our address, we plugged it into the LDS meetinghouse locater (which is online - I use the link from mormon.org) and learned which ward we'd be in. It required a short ride on the Underground and a longer one on a bus, but we made it there on time on Sunday, and just loved it. There are a lot of African and West Indian immigrants in east London, and our ward was no exception. It's a young ward too, which is a little scary. If I had to guess, I'd guess at least one of the counselors in the bishopric and the relief society president are younger than us - and what's scary about that isn't that I have any lack of faith in their abilities, it's that I shudder to think what kinds of callings we'll get. It's also a growing ward, with quite a few new members and others coming to investigate. Trevor and I agreed that it's a fantastic ward.

And then a week later, he went to a stake priesthood meeting and learned that it wasn't our ward. We were right on the boundary, and the ward that we were to go to was an equally long trip in the opposite direction. Sooo, last week we went to our real ward, and we love it too. Again, a frightening number of young looking people in high callings, a lot of immigrants and children of immigrants, a wonderfully involved relief society president who came to see me after I had to stay home one Sunday to take care of my son who had a cold. All the shuffling around also put off us getting callings - but Trevor got called to be the gospel essentials teacher last Sunday, and I know I'll be called to something next. It should be interesting.

I must confess, though, I'm really glad to be out of the US right now. I love the church, but the mixture of American politics and folk doctrine was getting offensive. I voted for Obama. I'm a vegetarian. I'm a liberal. I have a current temple recommend that I am worthy to hold - this really shouldn't break anyone's head...

And I also wrote some stuff

These days are a little tedious as I wait for my computer to arrive. It was shipped out last week, and should arrive tomorrow or the next day. Today was a possibility, but it did not come. This means I need to stay home, though, so that I don't miss it, because if they can't deliver it, I need to wait 48 hours and then go retrieve it from the post office, and that thing's heavy!

So I'll write more about the days after our move while my son plays on the floor. Right after we got into our new apartment, Trevor had a week long course in Bristol. We considered all going, but my parents were passing through London later in the week, so our son and I stayed here.

I got a ton of writing done, and the best part of that is that I had a ton of writing I wanted to do. Stories just take for-ever to mature for me. I always have to do a junk draft, and sometimes several before I feel comfortable enough in the world to actually sit down and write something resembling a draft that could be polished up into a final draft. I go for long periods of time working on projects that make me want to rip my hair out, and when I finally break through to the point that I feel like I can polish one up, I only want to rip my hair out about a third of the time, so that's an improvement.

I'm working on a YA urban fantasy right now, and I've got 44,000 words down. This one will be long for me, given I spent years honing my ability to do the 60,000 word novel. People nowadays just seem to love books that are slower paced and use a lot of showing rather than telling, and I'm willing to try my hand at writing in that style, provided my characters and world can hold my interest. That is still an ongoing process, getting to that point.

Someone who's been an amazing help to me is my friend, Char, who's been reading the book as I write it. Forget finding a friend who'd lay down their life for you. The true measure of friend loyalty is someone who'll read your draft prose and not beg to lay down their life instead. So far, Char hasn't, though I keep testing her on that front.

While I don't expect to make a ton of money with this book, I would like to sell it in the national market. We'll see how that goes. I already know some agents that I'd like to try, who expressed interest in the next thing I complete. I also think this particular novel and the series that would grow from it, are the most marketable thing I've written. So, we'll see.

It's odd, when I talk to people, to hear their "win the lottery" take on book publishing. A lot of people have this idea that you write a book, send it out, and end up either becoming J.K. Rowling or nobody. I've actually heard, more than once, people say, "you can't make money at writing unless you're someone like J.K. Rowling" - though let me point out, I know no one in the industry who says preposterous things like that. J.K. Rowling was told, when Harry Potter was accepted for publication, that she'd probably make very little money. Many top selling authors worked their way up to their market position, rather than just writing something so brilliant that they got chosen to make millions with every book after that.

I sometimes wonder if people believe the "lottery" myth about writing because they can't imagine bothering to do it the way most writers do it. They can't fathom writing a whole novel, that they then shelve and never get published. They can't imagine submitting to a dozen or two dozen or four dozen agents to find the one willing to represent them (no exaggeration, whatsoever, on the numbers there.) They can't imagine selling their beloved, year long investment novel for a few thousand dollars, and then working at the next one to make a little more. They are boggled at the thought of having to get five well received novels out there before royalties start coming in, and terrified of the fact that a good career can crater at any point. Your editor gets fired. Your agent passes away. You inadvertantly offend the marketing director.  Your cover artist discovers a new hallucinogenic drug an the resulting cover is beyond abstract. (All of those, incidentally, are real things that have happened to real writers.)

Writing, like anything else, requires reliability on your part. People are so in love with the idea of the one novel that becomes a best seller. In order to make a career out of anything, though, you can't get all absorbed on that "one" brilliant moment you had. A career is built on a consistent body of work and a lot of long hours and hard work.

And on that note, I've got another chapter to write!

Jewelry making

Usually the difference between American and and English spellings doesn't affect me much. I wrote in American all through college and my tutors seemed indifferent about it. Of course, of all the things I could pick up as a hobby just before moving here, I had to choose something that's spelled quite a bit differently in English English. I'd call it jewelry, but the locals call it jewellery. My Blogger spellcheck even underlined that last one.


Before I left the US, I looked around for a self supporting hobby and got into chain maille jewelry. It was a skill that wasn't too unlike knitting and crocheting, in that it required a lot of hand strength and good eyesight. I'm not brilliant at it, but I can close rings well enough that it's hard to find the seam to open them again and the rings are flat once I'm done working them.

It also reminds me of knitting and crochet because there are a lot of simple forms that can be made into simple designs. When I get my camera cable and my computer, I'll post some pictures of what I'm talking about. Again, I'm no genius, but I think I've hit upon a few ideas that I hope will appeal. I've got some family getting married this year and I've offered to do their wedding jewelry. Doing their custom orders is a good way to learn new skills and experiment with different styles.

As soon as I got to the UK, I started searching for suppliers and wholesalers. What I found was that quite often, even factoring in import taxes, it was still cheaper to buy from the US. I don't know why this is, really. More competition, perhaps? Anyway, I've ordered some materials and scavenged around on Etsy for surplus supplies that other local crafters are selling off, and this'll be what I make my first pieces out of that I'll try to sell (er, not the best use of prepositional phrases there... sorry.) I've also been trawling the internet for tutorials and buying e-books. I read a bunch of books back in the US too. Now, I know book learning isn't the normal way to learn. Most people sign up for a class, but it's the way I learn. I got a cheap sample of colored wire from a local company and I'll be using that to practice new wire wrapping techniques. They'll be funny colors, but I don't mind because they'll also be defective in a whole bunch of other ways. I'll keep practicing until I get used to the various techniques I'm trying to learn.

I've also been researching sales outlets and I'm working on two. A friend of mine took me around a bunch of little boutiques in London that sell items by local artisans, and I've been researching Etsy like crazy, looking at what shops are selling and which shops are selling and what the price ranges are. I'll definitely put items up on Etsy, and I'll also see about selling to a boutique.

The thing about starting up any new venture is that they rarely ever make money right off. It takes time, months if not years, so my goal here is to set up the best business model I can and see if I can get it to work. I've got three years here in the UK when I'll be a stay-at-home mom, so that seems like a good window. Wish me luck!

Flat viewing

Oh dear, I've had a friend tell me she is looking forward to this next installment. I'll have to think of something exciting to jazz it up with. I wouldn't want to let either of my readers down, here.

I believe the saga ended with Trevor and I walking down a street in east London. We'd gone into two estate agencies, been rebuffed, and were headed back to the tube station, when we passed another estate agency. It was one I hadn't really heard of, probably because they don't leave their old listings up on Rightmove forever. Trevor suggested we stop in, so we did.

The agent we met with didn't seem to mind that we had American accents and no UK bank account open yet. He had a couple of flats that he thought might be a fit for us and one of them he'd already arranged with the tenants to show to someone else that evening, and we could go along to the viewing (something that is also quite foreign to me. I'm used to the American convention of only viewing real estate when the inhabitants aren't in.) He told us he'd show us that one and another one that was unoccupied afterwards.

We went away, fed our son, wandered around, and then returned to find the other flathunter at the estate agents' explaining that she didn't want to view the flat that the appointment had been set up for. She wanted to see another one. Lucky for the estate agent and for us, we just took her appointment, looked at the flat and one other, and then headed down south again to our friends' house.

I won't bore you with the rest of our flathunting adventures. I'm sure this is boring enough already. Suffice it to say, there were other flats and we looked at them, and as we looked at them, we kept thinking we really should just put down an offer on that first flat. By this time, we'd reduced the maximum rent we wanted to pay still more, because it was cold and we were actually here, in the UK, with still no idea of what our budget would run.

Long story short, we called that estate agent and put in an offer on that flat, and that is where we are living now. It's small, a one bedroom, but it's in an excellent location right by a tube station and is near a park, where our son can run around and wear himself out.

We absolutely love east London, which lives up to its reputation as the region where a lot of new immigrants from the subcontinent, Africa, and the Carribean live. Given that a major motivator for coming to the UK was the Indian food, this is ideal.

Next time I'll ramble on about my jewelry making :-)

Flat hunting

My father said he would ship my computer this week, and once I have it I'll be able to be more fully online and do thinks like feed the poor, starving dragons here on on my site. Poor babies!

Last post I promised I'd talk about finding a place to live in London. One thing that's changed about the UK since I lived here last in my 20's, more Americanisms have penetrated the language. When I left, the terms were "flat" and "to let". Now I see a lot of "apartment"s "for rent". But whatever you call them, they are very pricey, something we knew long before coming.

I started my search while still in the US, using rightmove.co.uk. By the middle of December I had over 80 listings of flats in our price range, which led me to lower our price ceiling. Trevor is making a tiny fraction of what he made in the US, and I am currently making nothing other than a few dollars on royalties and short story sales. The stress here isn't so much learning to live on less. I actually don't mind having a simplified life. The stress is figuring out a whole new budget in a whole new country, where the relative prices are so different. Real estate is expensive - like one would expect. Groceries are very cheap - we buy the store brand of anything and everything we can. So, anyway, when a lot of properties showed up, I lowered the maximum rent we'd pay and redid the search.

When we arrived in the UK, we still had 100+ listings. Now, I suspected that many of these were properties that had already rented and that the estate agencies hadn't taken down. I was right about that. What I didn't expect was that estate agencies were very leery of dealing with a couple of foreigners, even ones who had been upstanding, suburban, home-owning, two-car driving, excellent credit score types in their former life. The first question we got time after time was whether or not we had jobs yet. When we explained that Trevor was a student on a stipend, many of them just broke off the conversation. Even though he's a student at a well thought of school and had documentation showing his income guaranteed for three years. This behavior also made me wonder how often they dealt with American families with small children who just show up in the UK with a visa and have no plans to support themselves. Who are these people?

Some estate agents wanted us to prepay 6 months rent, which was possible, but very inconvenient. We'd have to sell stock and empty out savings accounts that we've worked hard to build up. Others wanted a UK guarantor, and there was no way we'd even consider asking any of our friends to do something like that. We could tell this whole thing was going to be an ordeal, and it was further complicated by the fact that we hadn't yet opened a UK bank account. To get the kind that would suit our needs, Trevor needed to get a letter from his advisor, and this would take a few days.

In fact, everything took "a few days". Even when we looked at properties, when we asked for information on things like taxes, we were told that they would call us "in a couple of days" with the answer. In the US, a couple of days is often all it takes for a property to rent, depending on the market. We were warned by our friends, Neil and Yvonne, that it might take several weeks to get a place to live, which meant several weeks before Trevor could start work on his course.

Before our arrival, I'd narrowed down the search of London properties by neighborhood too. Imperial is in South Kensington, which is extremely expensive, areas near there that a lot of Imperial students favor, were out of the question for us. Most students are single and live with roommates. So I'd found some cheaper areas near South Kensington, and then also looked at areas of east London which are much farther away, but are along the Underground lines that go to South Kensington. The commute from each area was roughly the same, time wise. Near the school was a shorter distance with more train/bus changes. East London was a longer distance, but all one train ride.

We called estate agents and finally went to east London and just walked in to several. In the first week we managed to see several properties.

And I'll blog more on that soon!

Our arrival

Now I'm backtracking to our arrival in the UK on January 10th. After we got rerouted through Chicago and Dublin, we arrived in Heathrow, got our bags, and followed the signs to the lobby. We assumed we'd go through UK customs, but we didn't. The Irish don't have to and we were on an Aer Lingus flight. Word also had it that half of Heathrow's employees weren't showing up to work because of the snow. Yes, we arrived right after a snow storm.

Britain isn't equipped to deal with snow. It lies right in the Gulf Stream, which keeps its temperature above freezing. (It's a little amusing to hear what the Brits refer to as "freezing". It doesn't have to be cold enough to literally freeze water.) When 20 cm of snow got dumped on the southeast, London and the surrounding area didn't have enough snowplows and sand trucks to clear all the roads. Thus it was a looong, laborious process. In New Mexico, a snowplow can just push all the snow into one big heap at the end of a cul de sac, but in a big city, snow has to be loaded onto trucks and hauled out. There's no convenient place to just leave big mountains of the stuff.

But our friends, Neil and Yvonne, were able to get to us not too long after we arrived and we loaded our things into their two cars and went to their home. They were wonderfully hospitable to us while we scrambled to find an apartment and get our bank account set up. Trevor checked in at school and got his student ID and the chance to meet everyone in his lab.

Finding an apartment is its own blogpost, one I'll type later, when it isn't so late and I'm not so tired.

RIP Uncle David

So, we have internet, and I'm able to blog again from my little netbook. The computer won't arrive until next week, as we decided at the last minute to ship it rather than to take it as checked baggage. The hard drive is sitting on my nightstand, waiting.

A lot has happened in the last several weeks, but for this first post I should take a moment to honor my uncle, David Santogrossi, who passed away last week. Because I'm 6,000 miles away with a small child in tow, I will not be able to make it to his funeral, which is a shame. I did, however, get to see him one last time over the holidays and my son got to meet his great uncle for the first and last time.

My Uncle David was a professor of psychology and an associate dean of liberal arts at Purdue. (Random trivia: Ted Allen from Queer Eye was one of his students and a psychology major.) He was always devoted to his nieces (there are five of us, no nephews). I remember one time when I was a teenager, he came to New Mexico to visit and he and I went to Taos to have lunch with a friend and tour all of the bookstores (yes, I know where each and every one is :-). It was a long drive out and a long drive back and I saw my uncle perhaps every other year, and yet talking to him was easy. He was always genuinely interested in who I was and what I thought.

Besides being an accomplished academic, he was also a talented percussionist with an extensive collection of drums from all over the world in his home. I'll think of him every time I see my son banging on an empty cardboard box, as I think this gene may have been passed on. David performed regularly with musical groups and in pit orchestras for shows, and knew more Broadway show tunes than just about anyone I've ever met, and that is saying something, given how many musicians I know.

While I'll miss him terribly, I'd rather spend my time remembering his life rather than mourning his death. Once I get my computer, I'll start pestering relatives for material for a Picasa scrapbook. One great pity is that David never had children of his own, but there are enough of us who carry his memory to ensure that he'll never be forgotten.