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Creating Handmade Books and Writing Fiction in Kanazawa, Japan 金沢市
Episodes
Monday Aug 05, 2019
Monday Aug 05, 2019
I wrote a book. I finished it. I put it up for sale on Apple iBooks. You can download it, read it, and, hopefully, enjoy it.
City of Cocks is a “literary” Murder Mystery which means the characters are stronger than the plot although the plot is important.
Sol is accused of murder. His wife and a friend have to prove he was innocent. However, the friend is a some-what violent alcoholic poet who sees ghosts. Not the most reliable of witnesses or character witness. During the investigation and trial, we learn a lot about many of the people in this small Oregon coast town:
Sol’s wife Anne and the poet who talks to ghosts and lives in the bottle, the sheriff and her deputy, a grandfather who might be dead and his grand-daughter who loves to cook chickens, a legless bartender, two barflies, a fastfood shop (Chicken Hut) owner, and the murderer and his very casual approach to relationships.
Available at Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble and Scribd
In Bookbinding, I made two covers and one clamshell box. The clamshell has a red book cloth cover and snugly fits an A6-size pocket book. It has a raised bit on the 
front cover. It has also, however, very bad corners, so I’m not including any pictures here.
I am, as you can see, showing you the two covers I made.
One is better than the other. The red one is more cohesive and unique while the other looks … like scrap bits of cover material slapped on; which it is.
In the near future, both of these will house Moat Boat Banana content (blank graphic paper notebooks; A6 in size; available for sale; fun to use.)
Monday Jul 29, 2019
Monday Jul 29, 2019
I managed to cut myself again. Doing exactly the same thing as the last time I cut myself: a piece of bookboard in my left hand, a knife in my right and trying to cut the bookboard’s thickness. Knife slips. Blood ensues. Fortunately this time not so much blood. I guess I failed to cut deep enough to extract it.
What was I making when the injury occurred? An A5-sized graphic-paper blank notebook with 100 pages, a raised front cover, a closing strap, and a bookmark. The closing strap, book cloth, and bookmark are, as you can see in the photo, all red. The endpapers are green, however. Next time, they too shall be red.
Fiction
I have written on Three different novels. The first is the first book in my action-oriented conspiracy trilogy: Fear. I added two chapters, introduced a new character, and set up the conspiracy. The second is Giapan. Yes, again. I finished one chapter, started another and continued a debate between the main characters.
The third was a novel I started and talked about about two plus (?) years ago: Stealing November. It’s original title was Eating November but I changed it Heart of November — an homage to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (plus Eating November made no sense) but I changed it to Stealing November because it takes place in November plus it is a huge adventure for the main character who steals the month from when he is ‘supposed’ to be in school.
Stealing November takes place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The main characters are an American high school student who joins forces with a Congolese underwear salesman to rescue an Australian woman from sex slavery after a French drug dealer/smuggler sells her to a sex ring. I guess you could call it an adventure novel.
Here is a finished book for your reading pleasure from Apple Books.
A woman born from the slime of a Venetian canal is sought after by the CIA or is it Homeland Security? She escapes with the help of an EPA water specialist.
Buying this book will help defray some of the costs of making this blog, podcast, and the actual making of the book itself. Plus, I hope you will enjoy it.
Don’t forget to check out some videos I made. Enjoyable and short (some less than five minutes.)
Monday Jul 22, 2019
Monday Jul 22, 2019
Bookbinding
One result of separating my podcast into two parts: Bookbinding and Fiction is to encourage me to spend more time bookbinding. I want — Need! — to have something to talk about in the bookbinding section of the podcast so I have to do more bookbinding. Makes sense, right?
This week, for example, I printed out three blank notebooks and cased in two. Two are graph paper blank notebooks in two different sizes: A5 and B5. Both have (or will have, the A5-sized book isn’t finished as of this typing) a closing strap, a bookmark, a raised portion of the front cover, and both are about 100 pages. The completed B5 notebook is pictured here with a bone folder for size comparisons. In real life the cover is much more blue than purple.
The third book is a revised edition of my Yes! Moat Boat blank notebook that features graph paper on the right page and lined paper on the left page. It also has eight or nine pictures of people important to and famous for art related to bookbinding. I believe I talked about this book in the last episode. And probably ad nauseam. It is A5 in size which is the same as saying it is paperback size, a creation by one of the people in the book: Aldus Manutius.
Today I will probably print out another copy of this book and bind it next week. See? Productive! All of these are for sale. Contact me for details. My For Sale page is here.
Fiction
I wrote on, but did not even come close to completing, Fear Itself (the first book of my Fear Trilogy, a conspiracy-alien war-political thriller trilogy: Fear Itself, Fear the Dead, and The Sound of Fear) and Giapan.
Fear Itself has gone from 15,000 words to about 17,000 words but with much editing done on the first 15,000 to make it more intense, tense, competitive, and conflictive. The dialog reflects this, I believe. Less chitchat and more debate (not a formal debate, mind you, just anger).
Giapan is more conflictive as well. I’ve increased the conflict or competition between the four main characters, between them and their ultimate goal of getting to Madrid, and between their philosophies (such as they were; the artist believes all living beings – plants and animals – are connected; one guard is an atheist; the other guard is a mass-attending, confession-adhering Catholic (remember, this is not so long after the Inquisition) and the ex--rebelling--angry nun is angry at the institution but not at God itself. Maybe).
I’ve also discovered that they are walking through the heart of La Mancha where Don Quixote was from which makes the connection between Don Quixote the novel and Giapan all that stronger.
This is to say I haven’t written on Botchan’s Bartender, Stealing November, or Caraculiambro at all even though the end is in sight for both of the first two. Usually when I can see the end, I can write quite quickly towards it and finish the novel soon. For some reason I find the first two difficult to finish.
Caraculiambro is so old I must re-read it to get the ideas and plot straight in my mind so that is still and Again! on the back burner of my typewriter (typewriter? With burners? Is he mad?)
Go to YouTube to see videos of my bookbinding (and just a smidgeon of fiction).
Speed Binding Three Notebooks!
Friday Jul 12, 2019
Friday Jul 12, 2019
I’m not going to put up a photo of the cut in my left-hand middle finger. That’s a relief, eh? While I was cutting some backboard in half through the thick edge, I let the cutter knife slip and it nicked my finger. I bled. I made a makeshift bandage out of mull and backcloth. Just for your medical information, this method does not work. However, if you go to TDGB 21, you can see me in pain.
I was making two A6-sized blank notebooks. The Seriously Humorous One has oddly numbered pages (i.e. not in the normal sequential order), a bookmark, kimono cloth as a book cover, a strap to keep it closed, outdents on the front, and an envelope on the inside back cover, and I estimate it is about 150(?) pages. It also has brownish graph paper so it can be used for easy doodling or writing poetry while riding the bus to work.
Yes! Moat Boat also uses graph paper but it is white instead of brown and it has a nice red cover instead of a kimono cloth cover.
However, Yes! Moat Boat has some of the same items as The Seriously Humorous One. It has a strap to keep it closed, a bookmark, and outdents on the front.
Unlike TSHO, the pages are sequential so we know it has 100 pages. It does not have an envelope in the back, because I have to practice making envelopes with more forgiving paper. It does, however, have pictures of eight people involved in bookbinding. The eight are:
- Cai Lun, the inventor of paper in about 105 CE
- Bi Sheng, the inventor of movable type although his was made of porcelain, in about 1041~1048.
- Aldus Manutius, the inventor of a whole slug of things: the comma, the semi-colon, the cheap pocketbook (A6), Greek editions, italics, and printer of the very odd and anonymous Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.
- Johannes Gutenberg, the popularizer of movable type; although Bi Sheng invented it and, in Japan around 768 (?), a million copies of a sutra were made using movable type, it was not used by the leaders so it was not used by the common people either; Gutenberg changed that.
- Peter Shöfer, (or Schoffer) the creator of typefaces for Gutenberg,
- Nicholas Jensen, creator of Roman typefaces,
- John Baskerville, creator of, well, Baskerville typefaces, and
- Claude Garamond, creator of the Garamond typefaces. This post is using Garamond.
Fiction
Despite continuing to write on two novels (Giapan and Botchan’s Bartender) I am starting a third one. This third one, however, is an action-oriented, plot-plot driven Sci-Fi, Futuristic, War Story following the exploits of Sergeant-Major Matt McKenzie as he survives the war with one arm missing and is thrust into the Byzantine battlefields of Politicians. He is aided by his doctor, Vicki Hankla, who insists on helping even though she has hundreds of wounded soldiers to attend to. This is the
Fear Trilogy
It follows War, Peace, and the inevitable War Again. In the first book, McKenzie is a pawn of the military. By the third book, McKenzie is more in charge. I want each book to be about 50,000 words (about 250 pages) and the first book is already 15,000 words.
To make things even better, I have a Fourth novel (Stealing November). I have written the ending. I merely (Merely! he says) need to connect what I have written —
• high school student gets involved with drug dealers, murderers, mystic witches, and sex in the Congo, you know, the usual high school romance (minus the singing and dancing ala Glee)
— with the ending. Simpler written than actually Done, I think.
And, yes, I have a Fifth unfinished novel (Caraculiambro) that has laid dormant for a few Years! Yes, Years!
A murder mystery that is very complicated, especially for my brain. It is, of course as you know, connected to Cervantes’ novel Don Quixote as Caraculiambro in that novel is a giant Don Quixote hopes one day to capture and send to his one true love, although he never actually meets the giant. I might need to pare my novel down a bit. Maybe a lot.
TDGB 21: Two A6-Size Blank Notebooks (and my blood).
Also available for your pleasure:
Friday Jul 05, 2019
Friday Jul 05, 2019
I made a book this week out of the book I sewed in the TDGB 16 video about using a link stitch. It has an upraised section that might resemble a skyscraper, but I had no real thoughts about it when I added them.
Three things about this book.
• First, it has a black strap to keep it closed.
• Second, it has a red book mark so you can find your place.
• Third, is has a new feature (for me): an envelope to hold receipts and slips of paper you collect over the course of a day. This 
version of the envelope is too stiff but it is the first version. I hope future versions that I make will be easier, much easier, to use and stuff with paper.
I know that normally the strap on the back page is usually under the endpaper and not above it. However, I wanted to have the light brown endpaper contrast with the dark brown envelope while the black strap accents it all. I don’t think it worked and will probably keep the strap under the endpapers from now on.
Fiction
I am continuing to write on both Giapan and Botchan’s Bartender. And, again, both are nearing their ends. I probably added about two or three thousand words to each. The main advantage of going so slow is that when I read what I previously wrote, I make changes which I think improves the book, and I correct mistakes which definitely improves the readers’ pleasure.
I’ve also written about 10,000 words on a genre novel (most of my stuff can be categorized as literary fiction) about war, conspiracies, and terror. At the same time, I try to make the characters as real as possible.
I want this genre book plus the others (Calvado Pentalogy & Japanese Pentalogy) I have written online soon. Wish me luck.
Also you might have noticed this post was divided into Making Books and Writing Books. The podcast is similar. People who want to hear me ramble on about bookbinding can listen to the first part while people who want to hear me babble about writing fiction can skip merrily to the second part. Usually it will be half and half, but sometimes one will be longer.
Sunday Jun 16, 2019
Sunday Jun 16, 2019
A trilogy of terror, violence, manipulation, politics, and war has plummeted into my lap. More importantly, the client has bequeathed covers to my desk. The question the client has – and I wonder, also – do they reflect the character of their contents?
Books 2 & 3 are not yet completed, but Book 1 is racing toward the finish line. However, the question remains:
What does this cover imply?
If you see this thumbnail on your online bookstore webpage or in a real store (if they still exist), what kind of story would you expect to be reading?
This, from the evidence provided, is Book Two of a three book series which covers War, Uneasy Peace, and Prelude to another War. It follows the main character (as most novels do) from his time as a soldier to his election into the main governing body where he finds himself caught between the Hawks and the Doves in a debate that may lead to war.
On the other hand, I have been slaving feverishly over two of my books: Giapan and Botchan’s Bartender. Or, rather, to be honest, I have been writing on Giapan and re-reading/editing/re-writing the parts of Botchan’s Bartender I have already written. The main problem in the latter novel is trying to find the killer. I think I have found the murderer so it is only a matter of molding the novel toward its end and laying enough simple small clues to justify the choosing of that character as the murderer. Is that clear enough? I hope so.
For Giapan, we are getting closer and closer to the ending. The tunnel at the end of light is in sight! (The cover has to be nudged closer to the final product, too. Covers, however, morph and evolve over time.). The main characters – The two soldiers (Teubner and Barahona) will, maybe, be separating from the nun (Galatea) and the Japanese artist (Giapan).
However, two things have to be resolved first. One, how do any of them change in the course of their travels? Two, does anyone fall in love? At the outset of this novel I firmly told myself in no uncertain terms that No! No one is going to fall in love. However, now, it looks like two characters are inching toward the precipice of that emotion. We shall see.
As I look over the past few posts I realize the number that are about bookbinding has decreased. This is a failing I must rectify. And Soon!
Videos to Enjoy.
Sunday Jun 09, 2019
Sunday Jun 09, 2019
Like too many authors, I have four unfinished novels, three of which I have talked to you about. Two are from my Japan Pentalogy: Botchan’s Bartender and Giapan. One is a murder mystery with a strong homage/influence from Cervantes: Caraculiambro. The one I haven’t talked about recently takes place in the Republic of the Congo and is an adventure/crime/ story: Heart of November. Why are they unfinished? Why, indeed.
I think one reason is I can’t see the ending. Giapan is episodic so it can go on forever, if I want it to, which I don’t. I haven’t solved the crime in Caraculiambro or Botchan’s Bartender yet. I have suspects in the latter, but not the former. This is a problem.
I don’t know why Heart of November is unfinished. Maybe it is but I forgot? The cover has bullet holes in it; not that the Congo is dangerous, but that the main character is shot at a few times and he shoots back. “Murder” is even in the sub-title, right? A dead (pun) giveaway.
Thursday May 30, 2019
Thursday May 30, 2019
First, in the last (204) episode you heard the first page of my as-of-yet unfinished murder mystery Caraculiambro. This makes it the fourth! novel I have not completed. Four! Two are in my Japan Pentalogy and are Giapan, which takes place in 17th century Spain, and a novel which takes place in a small town in Japan: Botchan’s Bartender. The fourth is Stealing November, of which we shall not speak at present, okay?
Botchan’s Bartender is a murder mystery but the most important part of the novel is not the murder but the characters that populate the small town. Included in the story are high school baseball players, a not-so-famous chef, the murder victim’s brother, a high school-aged woman, a smallish cult leader, an alcoholic policeman, and the bartender of the title.
The bartender is a woman who is escaping her past by hiding in plain sight by owning a very small bar in a very small town. She just might be a character from another of the novels in the Japan Pentalogy: The Year Without Days, about a very successful cult in Tokyo.
I am hoping to finish Botchan’s Bartender sometime in the near future. Like, maybe, in a month or less. I want to finish Giapan, too, as they are the last two books of the Japan Pentalogy and I want that particular group of novels finished soon.
By the way, Botchan is a famous book by Japanese author Natsume Soseki and is now a word to mean the son of a rich family who dresses up nicely but has no real understanding of street life.
On YouTube is my latest video: TDGB 16 Link Stitch. Please check it out.
An SF-ish novel about a woman who cannot die and the government agency that wants her dead. Will an EPA water specialist save her? Or die trying?
Monday May 20, 2019
Monday May 20, 2019
I made three books one of which is the Speaking & Eating Kanazawa guide and Japanese language assistance book. After photographing and talking about them in Episode 203, I started another book; a graph paper notebook. What I should have done instead was edit and write Giapan and Botchan’s Bartender, two of my Japan Pentalogy novels which should be finished before you can say Procrastination. However, I didn’t, so there you are.
In the photo, the book with the kimono cover on the right is the Speaking & Eating Kanazawa book. If you’re coming to Kanazawa and don’t speak Japanese but do sometimes get hungry, this is the book for you. The kimono-clad book on the left is a graph-paper blank notebook. The red one in the middle with the closing strap, is a graph-paper blank notebook on light brown paper.
In this episode, I read the first page of a novel I began hundreds of decades ago. Well, at least half a decade ago. Caraculiambro: A Giant Mystery.
Caraculiambro was a giant Don Quixote talked about in his eponymous novel. He is never actually seen, just put up by the knight as what would happen if he ever came across a giant. In Giapan, Caraculiambro appears as both a giant, mean, and helpful (eventually). In this book, he is a giant and a private detective.
Page One of Caraculiambro: A Giant Mystery
Call me Caraculiambro. Some years ago, I forget how many, I was forced from my home in Olympia - home of the gods! - by intolerance. By the small minds of ordinarily-sized people, of which I can proudly state I am not. They called me names to my face, whispered behind their hands whenever they saw me, and the younger, more hot-headed ones would often chase me with baseball bats or tire irons. They always chased me in gangs of five or more for they knew fewer would not be able to subdue me.
The ordinarily-sized people called me names like Frankenstein or Quasimodo. They obviously did not know Hugo’s mythological creature was a short, misshapen hunchback and Frankenstein was the deranged medical student of Ingolstadt, not the poor hand-crafted creature of his insane experimentation. As if these poor people could read. If a comparison could be made I would dwarf Frankenstein’s nameless creature by more than two feet. And I would tower over Quasimodo like the spires of Notre Dame over-shadowed that poor misshapen man’s entire life.
My doctor hesitated using the word ‘giant’ around me but that is what I am. I am a giant. Twice the height of a normal man and twice everything else: weight, hand size, shoe size. Everything. It is for this reason and this reason only the people I encounter fear me. It is as if they believe if I were no longer on the planet, they would be better. A common misconception among ordinary people: if there were no differences between us, we would be happier.
The most intolerant were the zealots of religion; any religion. I was, in their view and words, an abomination, like pork, lobsters, and homosexuals. I’m convinced the more zealous the zealot, the less they are able to read. If they had read Genesis, they would have discovered that I am a Nephilim, the offspring of female humans and the gods that roamed the earth after God created the day and night, stars, and life. They think I’m joking, of course. Perhaps I am. I must face my life with humor or my tears would be a river that will flood the earth anew.
After a group of thirty youths brandishing clubs and bats chased me out of town, into the woods at the base of Mt. R–, and through the night, I decided to fight back. Not against all thirty that night, of course, that would’ve been suicide. And not with my fists and muscle, which would have been easy, but counter-productive in the long run; violence and hatred only begets more violence and hatred. And I would probably have landed in jail. No, I decided to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, Siddartha, and Hester Prynne, she of the lettered stigma.
As intolerance forced me from Olympia, I fled to the city of S–, which I refuse to identify. I established myself in S– as a private detective. I investigated mysteries that ordinary people could not understand. I was determined to be both the best detective and the most indispensable. I would, like Hester, who became the perfect Puritan woman, become the ideal businessman, and a run a very profitable business. Ordinary people would have to accept me because successful people can not be denigrated by the smaller people. At least, that was my goal. It worked out slightly differently.
After this, he gets involved in a land speculation conspiracy that leads to a murder and the disintegration of an extended family. Want to read more? Let me know.
To see me talking about Speaking & Eating Kanazawa, click on the logo
Thursday May 16, 2019
Thursday May 16, 2019
I cased in 3 notebooks last week and two of them are lined notebooks available for purchase. More on that later. I was going to case in five notebooks but I discovered some Horrendous errors in two of them: a printing error that made the page shift to the right waaaay too far making the photos in it unusable. Plus a pagination error. I mean, 45 shouldn’t follow 68, right? Am I right on that? Good.
One is Speaking Kanazawa which has both language assistance (Japanese and English) and reviews of coffee shops and restaurants.
Speaking Kanazawa has proven popular with several citizens of this city and is in the process of being edited. There have been some errors! In Japanese! That must be repaired before it is released into the wild.
Speaking of jumping into the public, my two murder mysteries, The City of Cocks and Feeding Vicki’s Corpse have Still! not been edited! I must be the laziest human in this room. Please wait for exciting updates on this possibility!