Ep. 290: Coptic Bound & Unfinished Novel(s)

Bookmaking

The first book of the year 2024 is a B6-sized coptic-bound 100-page blank notebook with a nice endpaper, red paper cover, and a cup of cocoa which I thought was coffee, but it came off of a bag of cookies from Miyazaki (Miyazac).

I can’t believe I started it last year. It’s been sitting on my workbench for at least two months. I finally finished it as part of my New Year’s Resolution(s)tm

Speaking of NYR(s)tm, one of them is to read more real books. I’m currently plowing through Joyce’s Ulysses (again; I read it in college, too.) and Marcel Proust’s Within a Budding Grove (Book two of his seven book In Search of Lost Time). I finished the first book, Swann’s Way, last year. 

Another NYR(s)tm is to give you a podcast more regularly; that is to say, more frequently. Realistically, I’m hoping that means every two weeks. Now, in order to have something for you to listen to on this podcast every two weeks about books I make and fiction I write I’ll need to make books and write fiction.

See what I did there? If I make more books and write more fiction, I’ll have something for you every two weeks. 

Fiction

I finished Heart of September! Oh, perhaps you remember last year when I posted that I was still working on it? Last November? Well, I finished it. This year. In January. It is complete.

With our heroes going there separate ways tremendously changed by their experience in the Democratic Republic of the Congo:

• Our hero (who, by the way, is never named) is back in Madison, WI in high school;

• Sakombi is off to France to live with his sister and avoid being murdered by a warlord;

• Amelia is also heading to France to recuperate and recover her former self in a monastery.

However, in looking through my folder of novels cleverly named Novels on my computer, I opened Molly Bright a novel about a kidnapping in Miyazaki (see above about cookies) and redemption in Osaka.

To my utter horror a novel I thought I finished Two Years Ago was – you can see this coming – Unfinished! Another one! Now, yes, I’m working on it.

You can expect to see more of Molly in future episodes. I hope you’re looking forward to it.

 

An Observation on Real Life, if You would indulge me.

January 1, 2024 at 4:10 pm the Noto Peninsula here in Japan (near Kanazawa) had a terrific earthquake. The Noto Peninsula is about two hours by car north of here. Yes, we felt the quake. And it was one of the scariest earthquakes I’ve ever been in.

It lasted longer than most, it shook harder than most. Cars rocked back and forth; buildings swayed dangerously. It devastated a couple of towns in the Noto area. It killed about 200 people.

Survivors are dealing with lack of water, heat, and the destruction of their homes. As roads are blocked, helicopters are constantly in the sky carrying personnel and supplies in and injured out. One woman was helicoptered out and gave birth the next day. One 90-year-old woman was found alive after being buried in her house for four days. 

It was a bad time, but things are looking up. Lives are recovering, but it will take a long time, maybe years, for people to get their homes back. We’re doing what we can (donating food and money).

Please, the world needs people helping each other.