Episodes
Friday May 04, 2018
Episode 174: Education?
Friday May 04, 2018
Friday May 04, 2018
I have set up three books on the computer using InDesign and have printed out two. One more to print and then I have to finish writing another novel titled Feeding Vicki's Corpse. What are the three books I set-up and why do it again?
I set them up again because I have been reading about interior book design: leading, font sizes, margin widths, and content for the headers and footers (mostly the book title, the author's name, and pages). In each article I read I see something that could improve my own books, so I edit what I have to, I hope, improve them.
At the same time, I edit the content. I fix spelling & grammar mistakes, correct mis-used words (their there they're) and improve (again, I hope) plot points, characterizations, banish lazy writing, and try to eliminate clichés.
The first book is the second book in the Calvado Pentalogy — Calvado: A Deadly Love Story about a man with a deadly disease. It's deadly for the people he likes, not for himself. And he likes Calvado, once he meets and gets to know her. So, of course, he must leave her alone. He is a low-level scam artist and a struggling jazz singer. She, Calvado, the star of the Calvado Pentalogy, is a medical school student and a fashion model. Drug dealers and crazy people are involved.
The second book is the third book in the Calvado Pentalogy — The Priests of Hiroshima: An Historical Love Story. In this story, Calvado is in Istanbul and discovers a unique antiquarian bookstore that deals only in books more than four or five hundred years old. She also discovers a cat with a mysterious power and portals to another time; a time when the modern book was being born and a forbidden love between a priest and a nun.
The third book I set-up is the fifth book in the Calvado Pentalogy — The Venetian Slime Woman: A Biological Love Story. An EPA water quality specialist falls in love with a biological freak, so to speak. The woman is from a small island off the coast of Venice but she is born from slime mold. The CIA — or is it the FBI or Homeland Security or just a rogue agent? — wants to capture her and experiment on her body.
My next assignment from myself is to produce e-books of the Calvado Pentalogy and sell them on either Smashwords and/or Amazon and/or iBooks. Or all three. Any suggestions?
Thursday Jul 28, 2016
Episode 140: Working!
Thursday Jul 28, 2016
Thursday Jul 28, 2016
- Putting Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne on computer, in InDesign & iBooks Author readying them (Nine Volumes) for release in iBooks and other epub related venues
- Putting my Calvado Pentology on the same computer programs for the same venues
- Putting Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman on the same for the same.
Friday May 30, 2014
Episode 122: A Mountain Day
Friday May 30, 2014
Friday May 30, 2014
The day after I printed out a prototype and sewed it together, the Japanese government added a new holiday. Back I ran to InDesign to make that a red-letter day. Not the government's decision but the actual day itself which, if you'd like to know is August 11. It's called Mountain Day, the fourth in a series of national holidays that celebrate nature. The other three are Sea Day (in July), the Spring equinox (in March) and the Fall equinox (in September). Mountain Day makes the 16th national holiday thus far in Japan.
My 2015 schedule book has two yearly calendars (2015 & 2016), a monthly calendar that runs from January 2015 to March 2016 (everything ~ schools and work ~ starts in April in Japan), and a weekly calendar that runs from Jan. 2015 to the end of April 2016. And why does the monthly calendar end in March and the weekly calendar end in April? Good question. I think I have more work to do.
It also has 12 pictures but the pictures have nothing to do with the seasons or the months. They are photos I took of relatively well-known scenes around town. In the book itself the pictures are muted so that the dates and days can be easily seen. Not your usual touristy shots but shots of parts of places so that people who live here can try to figure out where it is. At the end of the book are all twelve pictures with captions so people can check if they're right or not.
Monday Jan 13, 2014
Episode 119: Belated Christmas
Monday Jan 13, 2014
Monday Jan 13, 2014
At left is the cover of one book. It has textured off-white book cloth with a thin red string glued to the front. This one is B6 in size; slightly larger than a pocketbook but has more space for writing in the monthly & weekly calendars.
Three books were B6 in size while one, the one with the yellow rectangle on the cover, is A5. Or, if you're a north American, three were about 5 x 7 inches and one was 6 x 8 inches. Each book had a different cover, different photos, and different endpapers but the basics were the same. The basic calendar was made in InDesign, converted to pdf, and printed out using Cheap Imposter.
The most encouraging aspect of this project for me was the adding of the endpapers. I think I did a good job of gluing them in properly, and straight. At right you can see the Japaneseque endpaper on one of the smaller books with the very red one on the large book.
Hold Tight.
Tuesday Dec 17, 2013
Episode 118: Are Words and Books Connected?
Tuesday Dec 17, 2013
Tuesday Dec 17, 2013
Speaking of quicker, from printing the pages out on my soul-sucking Epson printer to pulling the complete book out from under the weights it slept under for a night, took about 12 hours. InDesign was a big help and if my printer didn't eat a page, and thereby screw up all the page numbers and layout for subsequent pages, it would be quicker. This particular layout is on my computer in both A6 and B5 sizes.
At first I was going to print the name on the cover but then I decided my printer would probably have a seizure and refuse to thread it through. I didn't want to jam up my printer when I have a lot of reports to finish; if I ever get around to them. Therefore, no printing on the cover. I might make a dust cover for it. That would be a first. This book had a couple of firsts already though. The first first was the iron-on backing for the cloth. The second first was my attempt at getting it done fast. From tweaking the InDesign file to folding & sewing to gluing and making the cloth was, as I said, about 12 hours ~ including sleeping under pressure. I think I can speed things up and make more in one sitting if I were industrious enough.
Sunday Dec 01, 2013
Episode 117: Tuna Imagination
Sunday Dec 01, 2013
Sunday Dec 01, 2013
Tuna Imagination's subtitle is A Fictive Collective which means it has snippets of history, fiction, one complete short story, an array of pictures and doodles, and is in many ways a hodgepodge of miscellany.
What kind of history? Mostly related to books and printing especially about Aldus Manutius, inventor of the comma; also Xenia Cage (John's ex-wife) who was Marcel Duchamp's bookbinder, and Nicholas Jensen.
And what is the short story? It's a story about a college student who discovers the meaning of life through a punch in the nose that gives him cerebrospinal fluid rhinorrhea. i.e. his brains leak out through his nose and while he slips in and out of a coma, he envisions the snippets of fiction and history. He is, in other words, the narrative glue that holds the book together. Kind of.
Wednesday May 22, 2013
Episode 107: Lined Wordy Journals
Wednesday May 22, 2013
Wednesday May 22, 2013
My most recent event was the making of two A6-sized lined journals with a slight difference. The difference is that each page had a translation in Japanese and English of a bunch of random words. The words came in two or three categories. First, such words as most learners of English will come across in their studies such as 'food' and 'study'. Second, confusing words the learner of English will probably see sooner or later such as 'book' which means both 'something people used to read in the 21st century' and 'make a reservation.' Third, fun words such as 'bamboozle' and 'booze.'
There are eleven signatures of four sheets each which translates into about 176 pages (both sides, of course. I've decided to count pages like normal people do.) They are A6 in size (41/4" by about 6" for my American friends). The procedure was as follows:
First, think of the words, write them down, and get them translated. As much as possible, I tried to pair words together that reflected something that both words shared: pronunciation in either Japanese or English, meaning, or rhymes. For example, "I" in English is a homophone for "eye". And 愛 (pronounced 'I') means 'love' in Japanese. So 'I,' ' 愛,' 'eye,' and 目 (pronounced 'may') are clustered together. 目 means 'eye' in Japanese
Second, put everything: lines, words, logo on a new file in InDesign and spend a few seemingly hundred hours tweaking it. Third, hope your printer can print out all the pages without eating a few in the process. Fortunately for me, this time, my happy Epson printer was mostly up to the job.
After printing out two copies of the book, I folded, sewed, and glued the spine, mull, and spine reinforcing paper. I then put the two naked, lined, wordy journals on the ever-growing pile on my desk of unfinished books. This gives me five books I must case in in the next week or so.
Most of the time was spent on getting the words and translations. However, the second most time-consuming process was printing. Being careful to print the right pages in the right order; being sure the printer didn't skip a page; making sure it had ink. Fortunately for me, I use a program called Cheap Impostor that does the imposition but between the preferences for Cheap Impostor and the Epson, sometimes I manage to print things out of order. Sometimes? Often. I'm practicing, though, so someday I hope to be as smart as my machines.
Monday Apr 08, 2013
Episode 103: Frank & Dracula
Monday Apr 08, 2013
Monday Apr 08, 2013
Yes, I know. Two episodes ago I said I'd talk about measuring covers for the book. But, but, something exciting came along! Again. This time it is two classic horror stories - well, three if you count them all. The first one is Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Not so much a horror story as a philosophical novel about what it means to be human. The movie is a bit different from the novel, as you might expect.
The second is the TwitterBlog-entry-like epistle novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. Lots of letters flung back and forth, some of which sound like Twitter entries. Like the opening sentence - which is too long for Twitter (and with proper vocabulary - should have, not should of) , but you might get the point.
Left Munich at 8:35 PM on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late.
The third novelette - literally written simultaneously with Frankenstein - is The Vampyre by John Polidori. This is considered the first vampire story and is only about 25 pages long. (Polidori, Shelley, Mr. Shelley, and Lord Byron were shacked up in Geneva one dark and stormy night and decided to write horror stories; Mary's has lasted the longest while Polidori's generated a new genre which, unfortunately, has culminated in the current vampire-that-twinkles genre.)
I slapped all three on InDesign, manipulated the text, added a few pictures, imposed them on CheapImposter, printed out the pages, and will now cheerfully sew them together. There are 27 signatures: Frank printed out an even eleven; Dracula snaked out 16, probably because of the added Vampyre novelette. This is going to take a couple of hours of sewing*, at least. The paper is from etranger di costarica, brown, and made in Japan.
Soon I will attempt to round their backs. This will be my third and fourth attempts at roundback books. Frankenstein in one book; Dracula and The Vampyre in another volume.
*I was right. The thicker book took 75 minutes and Frankenstein took an hour. Cords can be fussy little characters, can't they?Tuesday Mar 12, 2013
Episode 101: What I do?
Tuesday Mar 12, 2013
Tuesday Mar 12, 2013
This episode will be about what I think I do when I make books. A few years ago I started hauling around a bunch of junk that I need to make a book. This included only the essentials like: thread, two curved needles, a triangle, and a beeswax candle. (If the power goes out, I'm good.) I usually always have my keys with me – or they're lost somewhere in plain sight – and my key chain is a small surfboard which works perfectly as a bone folder. I also have a plastic red bone folder just in case I lose my keys. But before sewing the signatures, I need to print them out.
The printing process uses two or three computer programs. First, I slap the text into InDesign. This is where I manipulate the text, add photos, and create superfluous decorations. I export the document as a PDF and open CheapImpostor, which imposes the pages. CheapImpostor makes two files: Odd and Even pages which open in Preview. (All of these programs are on my Mac. If you use Windows, your mileage may vary.)
After Preview opens the odd and even pages, I print them out and, if I put the paper in the printer correctly, they come out in order. I fold the resulting imposed pages into signatures. Then I use my triangle to align the signatures and determine where I want to punch in the holes. I draw a line, and then, using one of the needles, punch the holes in. I used to use an awl and a block of wood to make the holes in the signatures but sitting in a coffee shop pounding holes with an awl is a tad disturbing to the other customers and baristas so I switched to a silent needle.
Then I measure out the thread, wax it with the candle, thread it through the needle and I'm all set to sew the signatures. An eight-signature textblock takes me about 45 minutes. Bigger textblocks take longer, of course. Usually I try to sew it in one sitting but if I can do 20 minutes here and there, it works out, too. After sewing the signatures, I'm reading to glue, add mull, add endpapers, and other finishing touches on the textblock. This I do at home so I end up sometimes with four or five books to be glued at the same time. Once I had seven or eight books waiting to be glued. Good times.
Next week: The Cover
Tuesday Mar 05, 2013
Episode 100: This Is Life ~ Harwood
Tuesday Mar 05, 2013
Tuesday Mar 05, 2013
Many many moons ago I received an e-book of Seth Harwood's This Is Life (a Jack Palms novel). Also many moons ago I printed it out and sewed it together. I also lined the spine. Then I set it on my pile of To Bind Naked books and went about my life. For a long time. Last week I managed to print out a cover and bind the whole shebang together.
The book is about 165 pages, A5 in size, hardback, and with a blue book cloth running down the spine. The cover paper is thick. It is from Strathmore and stiff. The photo was pulled off the internet and dropped into InDesign where the whole cover was arranged, rearranged, and finally printed out. The endpapers are plain brown which, if I were to do this over again, I would make metallic grey or have a red car door with bullet holes in it (you have to read the book).
What did we learn from this excursion? This is a series of bindings I've been working on to improve my binding experience. The others were the half-bound notebooks (Seen below in Episode 99) and a smaller blank notebook, also half-bound. I'm teaching myself how to put on a spine separate from the cover and to add the corners. What I learned from This Is Life is to make the paper cover slightly larger (about 2~5 mm) than needed so that it fits nicely under the book cloth. Again, measuring accuracy is important.