Beginnings

Sometimes you think so hard about what to say, you don't actually come up with any good opening lines. So here we are and there's a lot to say. Castle Books is happening, evolving, mutating like some strange 1950s swamp creature hell-bent on upsetting man's views of the natural world order. So I'll keep this short.

We take small incremental steps. An idea generates one day and gestates in the back of the mind for years. Finally, one day, when it's almost forgotten the idea charges to the forefront screaming "Now. Now is the time." Maybe we realize we have the experience to make that dream a reality now, maybe we just lose our common sense and the idea breaks through our weakened defense. Either way, it's no longer a distant thought or dream but a certainty. Now. Now is the time.

So, when this happened to me and I knew that I wanted to open up a brick n' mortar used bookstore the first thing I did was go to the library and check out every book on small businesses, accounting, and finances I could find. I'm about a fifth of the way through reading them currently and I'm a bit worried they're getting overdue. (As a librarian, I can assure you all that yes, most libraries do have a SWAT team sent out to return books that are egregiously overdue books). So I'm learning every day as much as I can and it's surprisingly thrilling. Even the boring bits are unimaginably riveting. They have to be. I need this business to thrive and I'm more and more certain each passing day that it can. That it will.

So thank you for reading my first blog post - there's more, so much more. But it's midnight and change and my tired brain knows only two things. 1) Never blog while falling asleep. 2) Ray Bradbury's first love was magic and it just so happened one of his ancestors was sentenced as a witch in the Salem Witch Trials. Condemned, but the sentence was never carried through (Thank goodness, what would a world without Bradbury be?) and I'm pretty, somewhat, definitely sure it may not be a coincidence.