Ep. 306: Three Books, More Agnes

Bookbinding

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been binding quite a bit; not crazily, but more than usual.

I made three A6 (pocketbook)-sized blank notebooks with between 140 and 160 pages. I’ve used kettle stitches and French link stitches; mostly to practice the French link stitch which I think looks nice on an open spine (similar to the Coptic stitch) but is more inspiring? creative inducing? artistic? Maybe all three at the same time. Let me know which you prefer when sewing a few signatures together.

The other reason I’m throwing myself into more bookbinding is to create covers. In the past, I have made covers with the titles on the front and the spine. I have made covers out of recycled paper. Now, I want to experiment with an Islamic cover. A few years ago, I made some Islamic covers but that was in the past. I need to renew my Islamic cover skills. Plus, I think they look good, especially on smaller books where people can shove receipts, memorabilia, and other memos they write on scraps of paper and insert them in their notebooks.

Fiction

The Post-humous Autobiography of the Widow Agnes Grout, Death Weaver (the title alone is a short story in itself) progresses as we speak (or as you read). Agnes is meeting a few political and business leaders. She is also having visions of people dying violent deaths which she can’t understand.

Her children are growing up and making their marks in the world, kind of. Ishmael, her elder son, will be a shipmaker/carpenter/nice guy who helps people in trouble.

Marlowe, her second son, is destined to be an artist working primarily in Vienna in the early 1900s (aka when Klimt and Schiele worked, lived, and died — 1918, the both of them).

Rebecca, her daughter, will succeed as a weaver, like her mother, but without the visions of the future but with the talent of making complex patterns seem easy.

Plus, the Oregon Duo of Feeding Vicki’s Corpse and The City of Cocks will be available soon, I hope. I haven’t uploaded anything anywhere but I wonder if the title of the second book is going to cause the gatekeepers problems, even though the final word is in some versions of the Bible and is the technical term for those in the chicken-breeding business.

I’ve proofread The City of Cocks and am formatting it this week. I proofread Feeding Vicki’s Corpse. As I proofread, I’m also making dramatic or clarifying changes. Feeding Vicki’s Corpse requires a bit of big changes. Major backstory has to be addressed.

Both novels take place in a small town in Oregon about twenty years apart. The protagonist in Feeding Vicki’s Corpse helps the local police solve a murder and a rape. The crime in The City of Cocks is a random murder.

Video (killed the radio star)

TDGB 41 is me attempting to sew a case-in book without skipping too much. A ten-minute video of me fumbling through sewing a kettle stitch requires a bit of dialog and I have included more. Not dialogs, but a monolog as I’m the only one talking.

If you’re interested in bookbinding, please check out Tedorigawa Bookmakers Video.