I've done what I swore I'd never do...

I broke my schedule. Stopped escaping into the office with a mug of tea to write, research, edit, and read for the blog. I let Shelf Awareness back up, tossed publisher pick newsletters aside, let the to-do box overwhelm the completed box. I kick myself every night when I crawl into bed without accomplishing something in the book world other than what I get done at the store.

The first three months of the new year suck at a bookstore. Sales are down, customers aren't spending, exciting new releases are minimal, and (when you live in my neck of the woods) the temperatures are just as miserable as the economic climate. It's hard to motivate myself to write about books when I spend all day moving them around to kill some time.

So, I need to get myself remotivated, back on track. I've been reading a lot more (something I didn't do for the six weeks of holiday season) so I'll start posting reviews. I have to go through my publisher catalogs -- I owe some reps some lists. I need to respond to the latest #amazonfail, even if it's late. I need to vent about the new Kindle users who hide upstairs to tap into our wi-fi and leave their coffee cups all over our tables, the customers who are irritated because their kid's teacher didn't call the bookstore to tell us the class of 30 kids needs Macbeth for tomorrow (we've got a plan in place - it's brilliant), and how the very liberal community where we are located has gone all conservative in the last two months and thrown all of my ordering out of whack.

I need to tell you about how good Heist Society by Ally Carter is, how effective the Penguin Classics Deluxe editions are in driving fiction sales, and why in the world we are up double-digits in sales year-over-year. I need to tell you about New Orleans nite in the Bistro, the bookseller's Anti-Valentine's Day party, and how simply putting Michael Jackson's greatest hits on the overhead changes the demeanor of both customer and bookseller.

I'm starting to get a little mojo back. I think it's time to start writing again.