Ep. 278: Two Coptic Schedules and a Short Story

Bookbinding

I have completed two A6 (文庫本 / pocketbooks) books. The first colorful one is a practice coptic binding with colorful covers as practice for the second. Both are, as I mentioned before, A6 (4 by 6 inches for our north American brethren who life south of the Canadian border). The colorful one is 100 blank pages. Suitable for scribbling, drawing, or note-taking. I practiced not only the sewing (with a thread that was new to me) but also cover design (?). Not really design, but variety. On the front with the yellow streak, there are four different ingredients: red, red & snowflake ribbon, washi, the yellow streak, and blue. The back is equipped with only three ingredients: blue, a red square, and a yellow ribbon under the square. The green is part of the book board.

The second book, the one I practiced on the colorful one with, is for a client. It is an A6 (4 x 6) schedule with a yearly calendar, thirteen monthly calendars, and a weekly calendar. A total of 9 signatures with 5 folios each for 180 pages total. Blue book cloth with yellow (can barely see the yellow in the photo) thread. I neglected to include a photo of the end papers which, as this is Japan, a chiyogami style paper; very colorful in greens and florals.

Unfortunately, I finished it January 3, three days after the beginning of the new year. Fortunately, in Japan, nobody is busy doing anything until the fourth or fifth except eating (Osechi ryori ~ food traditionally eaten over the New Year holiday), watching TV (Kohaku ~ a popular singing show with competing red vs white teams), and visiting a local and popular shrine so the client wasn’t upset at all. In fact, I just got a postcard from her saying how she loved it. Before finishing it, though, I changed the yellow thread for a blue one that matches the cover.

As you can see, I got my colorful variety of ingredients passion out of my system before I made the schedule.

Fiction

In Fiction! Amazingly I finished what I thought was going to be a novel but turned out to be a novella? or shorter. Called Satan Râins. It is the inner dialogs of the band members, their engineer, and the floor. It’s called Satan Râins because the lead singer/guitarist misspelled reigns. And it is only 18 pages long. Where was my head when I thought it was going to be a novel; it’s not; it’s an anti-novel. Or a short story.

I continue with The Dancer about Merengue from Molly Bright. He is in the Dominican Republic and about to enter a merengue contest where he hopes to win enough money to get back to Japan after a year or more in Italy.

I have started and am currently stuck on two mystery/detective novels centered on Kanazawa. A group of five samaritans investigate crimes in Kanazawa. In the first two mysteries they’re looking into the murders of two females. Not being an avid reader of mysteries, I am having a slow time of it. I’ve begun to read a little bit more mysteries to wet my writing skills. Wish me luck.