Ep. 286: My Year of Drinking Kanazawa

Bookbinding

Having finished My Year of Drinking Kanazawa I cased it in. Without a few mistakes and some successes. First, the spine is too large by a half a millimeter. Second, the space between the spine and the front and back covers is too small. It is 3mm when it should be about 5mm. While the book opens adequately it is not sincere like a book of short stories should be; it is mocking us.

I like the black cover and the white band toward the bottom that announces, on the front, the title. There’s nothing on the back. I considered putting my name on it but decided to be humble. Besides, it didn’t look good.

At the same time as I cased it My Year of Drinking Kanazawa I also cased in its companion piece: Sakate. This is much smaller (in page count) than MYDK. The book boards are necessarily thinner and cover itself nearly monotone. I experimented with a vertical band with the title in both Japanese (さかて) and English (Sakate, of course) while forgetting to include, possibly in a larger form the other Japanese ( 酒手). I slapped my name on a horizontal band on the back which is where I got the idea that it didn’t look good. Maybe a small horizontal band on the front? 

Fiction

Both MYDK and Sakate feature Ishikawa saké and cityscapes. However, the reader, you, hopefully, doesn’t need to know about either to enjoy the story/plot/characters.

Whereas Sakate takes place in one bar with one bartender who encounters a variety of customers, MYDK takes place in 13 different bars, 14 different bartenders, and one customer (the unnamed narrator). 

While Sakate was realistic, MYDK is sprinkled with magic and spookiness. Not all the stories have ghosts or strange coincidences; just enough to spice up the reading experience. I hope. 

Secondly, while working on Soul of September (which was formerly called Heart of November) I had what you might call an epiphany. Parts of the novel were completely unnecessary: they didn’t move the plot along, they didn’t develop the main character in any unique way, they didn’t illustrate much at all for the reader. So I jettisoned them.

Then, I realized a couple of chapters could be reduced into one chapter while simultaneously reducing the wordiness, verbiage, and ploddiness of the story as a whole. So I combined them, reworded them, and enjoyed myself. 

I dare not announce that Soul of September will be finished soon, but the major obstacles (as listed above) have been corrected. I’m hoping no major hiccups will appear in the next few chapters. But there probably will be. Fingers crossed, wood knocked on, and all that. I might change the name back to Heart of September.

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This week: Two related mystery novels: City of Cocks and Feeding Vicki’s Corpse. 

A small coastal Oregon town has a murder on its hands. They turn to a retired Boston policeman to help them solve it. But he has a ghost following him; or so he thinks.

In City of Cocks, in the same coastal Oregon town, a disgraced businessman must rely on his wife and her drunk poet friend to save him from a life in prison. 

The poet sees things that aren’t there, making him an unreliable witness.