Almost all of my books have been in storage since moving to Florida nearly a decade ago. I took precautions against moisture, bugs, etc, but I’m just now getting around to setting up my home office and bringing them in.

About those precautions…they worked fine for a few years, but last time I visited the storage shed, I found that moisture had made the tape quit adhering to the boxes, compromising my meticulous sealing efforts. A couple boxes had fallen over for whatever reason (critters I suspect), busted open, and the contents spilled out.

I picked up a couple bookshelves at a yard sale, and am organizing my office…and don’t see how I’ll make everything fit. For every book in these photos there are probably two or three I’ll have to sell or give away.

Money is pretty tight these days, and one of the bookcases is missing shelves. I will probably cut some out of scrap lumber.

This bookcase I crammed with my favorite stuff–history, military history, westerns, sci-fi, fantasy (hack & slash; not all that wussy magic elf doorstop fodder), men’s adventure, war fiction–but it’s becoming clear that I have a lot of other paper books I’m never gonna have time to read even once. So rather than acquire more shelving so it can crowd my already shrinking office, I may start trying to sell it on E-Bay or something. Some of it I already threw away (like some OLD software manuals and a couple Writer’s Markets from back when such things were an allegedly justifiable investment).

Here’s the first heartbreaker I discovered: my treasured second-hand copies of Teddy Roosevelt’s autobiographical story of the Rough Riders, and a Genghis Khan biography. In this latter book I discovered a quote that John Millius paraphrased in Conan the Barbarian, in addition to other fascinating tidbits. Well, despite being protected from sun, rain, children, etc., both books had fallen apart in their boxes. Half of the Genghis Khan book had been glued to the side of the box by mildew, and the other half slid further down inside the box and fragmented even more.

I have big plans for my office, and a lot of the material needed. The plans include video and audio editing for possible upcoming film projects, and of course writing more books. What I still don’t have is enough time in the day. I keep hoping my ship will come in and I can retire from my day job to start chasing these dreams. So far that ship is still lost at sea.