Ep. 209: Cutting Myself for Two A6-size Blank Notebooks

I’m not going to put up a photo of the cut in my left-hand middle finger. That’s a relief, eh? While I was cutting some backboard in half through the thick edge, I let the cutter knife slip and it nicked my finger. I bled. I made a makeshift bandage out of mull and backcloth. Just for your medical information, this method does not work. However, if you go to TDGB 21, you can see me in pain.

I was making two A6-sized blank notebooks. The Seriously Humorous One has oddly numbered pages (i.e. not in the normal sequential order), a bookmark, kimono cloth as a book cover, a strap to keep it closed, outdents on the front, and an envelope on the inside back cover, and I estimate it is about 150(?) pages. It also has brownish graph paper so it can be used for easy doodling or writing poetry while riding the bus to work. 

Yes! Moat Boat also uses graph paper but it is white instead of brown and it has a nice red cover instead of a kimono cloth cover.

However, Yes! Moat Boat has some of the same items as The Seriously Humorous One. It has a strap to keep it closed, a bookmark, and outdents on the front.

Unlike TSHO, the pages are sequential so we know it has 100 pages. It does not have an envelope in the back, because I have to practice making envelopes with more forgiving paper. It does, however, have pictures of eight people involved in bookbinding. The eight are:

1. Cai Lun, the inventor of paper in about 105 CE
2. Bi Sheng, the inventor of movable type although his was made of porcelain, in about 1041~1048.
3. Aldus Manutius, the inventor of a whole slug of things: the comma, the semi-colon, the cheap pocketbook (A6), Greek editions, italics, and printer of the very odd and anonymous Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. 
4. Johannes Gutenberg, the popularizer of movable type; although Bi Sheng invented it and, in Japan around 768 (?), a million copies of a sutra were made using movable type, it was not used by the leaders so it was not used by the common people either; Gutenberg changed that.
5. Peter Shöfer, (or Schoffer) the creator of typefaces for Gutenberg,
6. Nicholas Jensen, creator of Roman typefaces,
7. John Baskerville, creator of, well, Baskerville typefaces, and
8. Claude Garamond, creator of the Garamond typefaces. This post is using Garamond.

 Fiction

Despite continuing to write on two novels (Giapan and Botchan’s Bartender) I am starting a third one. This third one, however, is an action-oriented, plot-plot driven Sci-Fi, Futuristic, War Story following the exploits of Sergeant-Major Matt McKenzie as he survives the war with one arm missing and is thrust into the Byzantine battlefields of Politicians. He is aided by his doctor, Vicki Hankla, who insists on helping even though she has hundreds of wounded soldiers to attend to. This is the

Fear Trilogy

It follows War, Peace, and the inevitable War Again. In the first book, McKenzie is a pawn of the military. By the third book, McKenzie is more in charge. I want each book to be about 50,000 words (about 250 pages) and the first book is already 15,000 words.

To make things even better, I have a Fourth novel (Stealing November). I have written the ending. I merely (Merely! he says) need to connect what I have written —

• high school student gets involved with drug dealers, murderers, mystic witches, and sex in the Congo, you know, the usual high school romance (minus the singing and dancing ala Glee)

— with the ending. Simpler written than actually Done, I think.

And, yes, I have a Fifth unfinished novel (Caraculiambro) that has laid dormant for a few Years! Yes, Years!

A murder mystery that is very complicated, especially for my brain. It is, of course as you know, connected to Cervantes’ novel Don Quixote as Caraculiambro in that novel is a giant Don Quixote hopes one day to capture and send to his one true love, although he never actually meets the giant. I might need to pare my novel down a bit. Maybe a lot.

TDGB 21: Two A6-Size Blank Notebooks (and my blood).

TDGB 23: The Envelope Book

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