No Gift Posting on Tuesdays! But Maybe Just This Once...For These Keychains. Plus a Mull Wrap-up.

This morning was spent wrapping up our events for the past few weeks to publishers. Yesterday Brandon Mull did three schools with us in a day, a record. That's nothing--when he was traveling around on his own, he did as many as five.  I asked Mull, author of the series Fablehaven and The Beyonders, how he was able to cram so much education into such a short time. It turns out it was part of a grant, and he actually had advance folk who'd get to the school ahead of time and set up the event. Wow!

Mull's event last night was a lot of fun. I learned how to pitch each series--Fablehaven is more whimsical adventure, while The Beyonders is more traditional Narnic (Narniac?) fantasy.  We all contemplated whether it would be worth it to be swallowed by a hippo if it led you to a magical land. I'm on the fence.


I arrived at the store to find a whole mess of stuff that I ordered had come in--book lights and giftwrap and journals and yes, even some holiday ornaments. So while I wasn't planning to spend my afternoon receiving, how could I not jump right in?

I'm sure you're wondering about the ornaments. We bought the product on sale, so we're able to offer them at a very good price. And last year, we sold out of two of the three skus pretty early. I'm sort of shock that they were still available. But I figured that if I scheduled them for September shipping, they'd surely be gone.

With that order, I found an ornament holder that would double well for jewelry. It was an excellent price--we are actually selling three of the lot of four off at the price of $19.95 (original list price $24.99). But we really needed this to display the leather animal ornaments that I bought at the Atlanta gift show. We looked at a whole bunch of ways to put them out, but our existing fixtures didn't do them justice, and they just didn't look right in a basket.

There were a lot of oohs and ahs, particularly from Halley, who wanted to set up a battle scene with the hippo. I noted I just learned that hippo gullets are portals to magical lands. And a customer chimed in that their teeth are quite melodic when used in a jazz combo.  For those on the youngish side, that's a reference to the Flintstones.