Distribution first. I’m not going to say a lot about this just yet, since the conversation with the distributor in question is ongoing.  But some interesting things have been laid out, and it’s clear that if you have a strong property that a distributor can have confidence in ab initio, there’s some flexibility in them thar hills that wasn’t otherwise expected.  I still don’t know where I’ll land decision-wise on this, but it’s new and interesting territory, and once I feel like I’ve explored it enough to come back with a rough map, you can expect a report.

The contact has also reminded me of how incredibly important it is just to know people.  If I’d just gotten cold-called here, there would be no chance of a deal.  Instead, a personal connection was made through a friend.  That friend knows both me and a particularly approachable guy at the distributor.  He enabled the conversation.  And the conversation started with information already in hand: distributor-guy read my blog post from Wednesday first, so he knew where I’d be coming from right away.  So that’s the value of knowing people right there: both in making the connection, and in taking the time to learn a little bit about someone before you try to sell them something.

Anyway, my wife, and her former employer.

As I said over on Twitter, Sun has played an important role not only in my wife’s career, but my own*. Her move over to work for Sun was the watershed event that gave us a stable enough household that I could quit my former job working in the internet industry. It was stressing me out — or more accurately, it was crushing me. I really had no love for it any more, but leaving it meant a truly drastic drop in our income.  My wife, being my wife, insisted that happiness trumps cash, and I listened.  That worked out well.

If you like who I am online today, and what I’m able to focus on doing — publishing as Evil Hat, customer service as IPR, layout for Hero Games, and blogging here — the thanks is owed all to Sun and to my wife.  Hating my job, soaking in a constant soup of stress, made me pretty damn spiky online before all that.  Stepping away from that stress gave me some real clarity, just enough distance to develop a buffer that can contain my ire at Someone Being Wrong On The Internet more effectively.  That still leaks through on time, but it’s so much easier to prevent than before.  And so, a sea-change in persona over time.  I still giggle when folks talk about me being this Nice Guy On The Internet, but it’s who I’m trying to be, and more and more it seems to be working.

The new direction following my wife’s job at Sun, and my exit from mine, also let me rediscover my love of layout. I’d been into the whole desktop publishing thing back in late high school, but college took me off-course, and then, well, the Web stood up and demanded my attention. From thence, a ten-year detour.  I’m really loving that I’m back on track.  I don’t always feel like I’m the strongest at it — I’m self-taught, and I don’t truly have the patience to learn all the science behind the typography — but I think I’ve done pretty well all the same, and I’ve been able to see continuing incremental improvements in my approach over the last several years.

And it’s a good thing, too: my “web programmer” skills have all but atrophied, so layout’s where it’s at for me, and right now it’s at least bringing in some keep-us-afloat money so we don’t have to cut as deeply into our rainy-day fund. You can expect I’ll be looking for a few more contracts to take on in the gaps between Hero and Evil Hat books if my wife’s job hunt takes longer than we’d like, but for the moment I’m still loving that those gaps mean more time with my baby daughter.

* Sun also played an important role very early on — my wife and I met while both doing customer support for a sun-hardware-based website hosting company back in 1996. So long, Sun; sorry to see you set.