Ep. 297: Balloon Books & A Reincarnation

Bookbinding

We finished the renovation of a client’s well-used travel book. It got a new map, a new cover, and new endpapers. The client also requested a blank notebook so I sent two blank notebooks. Knowing that one book was going to an artist, I sent a coptic-bound book because coptic-bound books open flat and are much more useful for drawing and sketching than case-bound books. Case-bound books are your usual hardcover books.

Secondly, I finished a creative outlet book that had two purposes. One, to see if I could make a book in one day. Two, to see if I could use up some scraps of paper and other supplies I had laying around. The result: A Cat Balloon Blank Notebook. 

Purpose #1 ended in semi-failure. I didn’t finish it in one day; it took two. Purpose #2 ended in success. Cat Balloon Blank Notebook has seven signatures of four folios. It is B6 in size. It has no page numbers because I don’t like my printer so I’m snubbing it. Plus, it’s running out of one color ink which means I can’t use it to print a completely different ink. 

Fiction

In fiction, we have failed to write a detective novel in thirty days. It has been about 15 days and we only have the first three or four chapters. We have a dead body, though, so that’s a plus. My problem is research.

For example, the dead body is found in a lake. My questions: what animals that live in the lake would help devour the dead body and what is the timeline for decomposition due to those animals, bacteria, and the water. And it’s not just any lake because lakes in different parts of the planet have different creatures living in it. This is Lake Washington in the Seattle area which is sometimes colder than expected. It’s also deeper than people think. But the body was found in a small cove which is not so deep. How does the temperature and depth affect deterioration of a full-clothed (minus shoes) female? These are the questions that hold progress back but fill my brain with useful (?) information.

So I resurrected a different novel. One that deals with a character who can read the future deaths of people around her. And 18th century New England loom factories. Which lead me to a zillion other questions that required more research. (18th century loom factories, for one.) Titled: 

The Post-Humous Autobiography of the Widow Agnes Grout: Death Weaver.

And she lives to be 170 years old so that hit me with a lot of research into American history.

Substack

Ever wonder why news stands in court rooms were often managed by blind people? Thomas Gore (Albert Gore’s relative and Gore Vidal’s grandfather) can answer that. In this episode of Diary of a Dead Cat Quarterly I write on the history of the white cane and seeing-eye dogs.