It's crazy busy. I am working my normal shifts at the comic shop day job, we have a passel of deadlines sitting on our heads and making us cranky, and there aren't enough hours in the day. Today, I had to spend a couple of hours of my after-work Radio-time dealing with the new PCI DSS compliance certification thing that all merchants who accept credit cards have to deal with now. Here's hoping our online store gets certified, because otherwise our credit card processing company will tack an extra charge onto our bill every month. (And this of course comes *after* ViSA and MasterCard raised their rates for everyone... ah, to be a retailer, all of the risk, none of the enormous wads of lovely money.) I'm peevish about this because we have an SSL certificate, use solidly secure hosting for the online store and have good encryption going on. On top of that, in the four years we've had our online store set up to take credit cards, we have had exactly *ONE* attempted charge-back, which was reversed in our favor thanks to tracking on the package. (We used to be PayPal-only before the new store went live, until they instituted their snarky "nothing mature ever" policy- which is when we promptly cancelled our account with them...) Anyway, this new certification thing has me all nervous, because I am worried they will think we don't do enough to safeguard our customer information, though we have taken every precaution possible and I know our hosting company is exceptionally good about security. It's still worrisome. Because if the credit card companies decide they don't approve of your PCI DSS certification? They can *fine* you- to the tune of $1 million! (Which, really, good luck trying to get that from me, har har...) And naturally, the regular quarterly certification service is going to possibly cost money as well- not 100% sure or clear on that yet. Cost of doing business...

In other stuff, we are beating our heads against these deadlines. Three books we're working on- Milk Presents: Greek Fire #1 (by the ever popular  poinko Poinko and  King_Cheetah Shon Howell -we are a bit behind on it due to previous books being backed up- but it goes to the printers tomorrow!) Milk Presents: XXX-Mas #1 and Furrlough #187! XXX-Mas is another fine Shon Howell brainstorm- adults only lesbian Christmas elf goodness. (Imagine if all of Santa's elves were female. And very, very bored. Plus, since Shon is involved, you know it's gonna be funny as well!) We've got some stuff in hand already for XXX-Mas from when it was previously solicited, so if you sent stuff in before, just ignore this next sentence! If you are an artist who works for us and you have goodies for either book, let Will know! (that email again is willworks (at) gmail (dot) com!) Remember also, we have the larger page count limit in Furrlough, because of the new 48-page format! That means stories can be up to 22 pages long! Woot! We just got Furrlough #186 in from the printers, so I'll be updating the Radio online store tomorrow, most likely. Oh, and we sent off the solicits to Diamond for the March 2009 books, and I have been getting more trib copies packed up for people (but far too painfully slowly for my liking...).

Tonight there is a midnight release for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. Because I still have that monkey on my back, I have been saving my pennies for months so I can buy my copy tonight. I won't get to play it until next week-ish sometime though, if then. Work comes first. (My new "wake up at 6 am every morning with the husband" sleep schedule doesn't help things either... though I get a lot done in the three to four hours I am awake before I go to work... the downside is being exhausted by 11 pm, which makes me feel like a grandma!) I still seem to be working 12-13 hour days most days, if you add up the day job shifts and the Radio work time. So, it's a reduction of my former 16-20 hour days of the past. Yay?

And finally, of course, I have new auctions up! I have lots of stuff to clear out and need money for various sundry things I am saving up for (fun things, like taxes and convention expenses!), so please feel free to take a look! Lots of comics, manga, magazines, etc.
New eBay auctions are here!
(I'd like to post more FurBid auctions too, since I have a bunch of stuff that can only go there, but I have had no time...)

Now, to finish up an editorial for the next Radio Waves, and then eat something for dinner.