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Creating Handmade Books and Writing Fiction in Kanazawa, Japan 金沢市
Episodes
Friday Jul 20, 2018
Friday Jul 20, 2018
I apologize for not having the ebook up this week. I have many excuses but the main one is, I don’t have an excuse; it should’ve been up by now. Sorry, sorry, sorry.
I’m also making a video of me making mistakes making a 2019 schedule book with lots of Ninja 忍者 in it. I made it three times and, like many things, the third time was the charm. Once I have it cased in and perfected (to my way of thinking, anyway) I will let you know how to get your own ~ free to the first five ~ 2019 schedule complete with, I hope, covers.
tedorigawabookmakers.podbean.com
tedorigawa.bookmakers@gmail.com
Friday Jul 13, 2018
Friday Jul 13, 2018
Depending on how my account works with iBooks, I will have a free short story for you all soon, I hope. If I can remember my password. The story is called In A Quiet Little Bar On The Coast and it deals with a salesman who takes a customer for a ride through time. I hope I can upload it to iBooks soon.
If I manage to upload it, I will upload five more free short stories before uploading and selling all six as an iBook I’m titling: The Merchant of Venus and Other Stories in the near future. Again, I hope.
On the other hand, I cased in three novels over the last week. The three are books I have spoken about before, probably at some length: Calvado, The Priests of Hiroshima, and The Venetian Slime Woman. They are, of course, for sale but not as of yet up on iBooks. Once I figure out this new-fangled ebook epub format, they will be up.
If you want a Real Book®? you can email me at:
tedorigawa.bookmakers@gmail.com
and request one. Ah, yes, but at what price, eh? A handmade book bound by the author of that book? Not $0.99, that’s for sure. But for you, my loyal listener? Not too expensive. No need to sell the house, ya know? Stay tuned.
tedorigawabookmakers.podbean.com
tedorigawa.bookmakers@gmail.com
Thursday Jul 05, 2018
Thursday Jul 05, 2018
youtube.com/tedorigawabookmakers
tedorigawa.bookmakers@gmail.com
I cased in two books, my novel Feeding Vicki’s Corpse, and gave them to the namesakes of the main character and one of the dead bodies. One major mistake on one of the books, but not something a non-bookbinder will notice right away. I hope.
I also printed out a 2019 (with a 2020 yearly calendar) schedule. It’s a sample that I hope the customer will like and buy one or a dozen. It is, as I type this, not finished yet. All that needs to be finished is the coptic sewing.
A Youtube video of myself doing something is up on, appropriately, 
YouTube at youtube.com/tedorigawabookmakers. I hope. One is titled Feeding Vicki’s Corpse - I talk about the plot, again, while showing you the binding in progress. The other one is titled Sewing Vicki- which is just me sewing the textbloc up. Please check them out.
Thursday Jun 28, 2018
Thursday Jun 28, 2018
Today, this very day, I punched holes, sewed, glued mull, the spine paper piece, and headbands on my edition of two of Feeding Vicki’s Corpse. Next? Casing the mothers in. One is being sent to a friend and the same one has two small tears in the sewing section of on signature. I hope, first, he doesn’t notice it and, second, it isn’t noticeable. Why did I tear holes in the holes? Anxious to get it done; I was working too fast. I must, as Aldus Manutius said, hasten slowly.
Besides the two Feeding Vicki’s Corpse novels, I also punched holes in three more novels. I’ve talked about them before but I will list the three here so you can feel comforted that they do indeed exist: Calvado, The Priests of Hiroshima, and The Venetian Slime Woman. They 
are all part of the Calvado Pentalogy, of course, parts two, three, and five. They have all been edited (by me) and require a second pair or more of eyes to check for spelling and other errors.
Monday Jun 18, 2018
Monday Jun 18, 2018
I’m getting back to binding soon after quite a few podcasts about writing novels and loading them on to InDesign. I have five novesl to bind including two copies of Feeding Vicki’s Corpse which I plan to give to friends. The current plan is to sew all five books with a link stitch. Then glue on the mull, the paper spin bit, and headbands. After that I will case in Feeding Vicki’s Corpse first, then the other three novels. Also part of the current plan is to do them in the next week or so. The best laid plans, of course, and all that. Here we have the five textblocks lined up with pencil marks to indicate where I should punch the holes for sewing.
Here are the five books. The one with my picture is the back cover of Feeding Vicki’s Corpse which you can see the front cover of directly below it. To the left of Feeding Vicki’s Corpse is Book Five of the Calvado Pentalogy The Venetian Slime Woman and to the right is Book Two of the Calvado Pentalogy: Calvado. Above Calvado is Book Three of the Calvado Pentalogy: The Priests of Hiroshima.
Simultaneously, I will continue to make my third edition of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and continue to write Stealing November, which I have talked about in the previous two podcasts.
Want to know my far-in-the-future plan? To make my second edition of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne. I mean, with what I have learned with InDesign in the last year, I feel I can make a better edition of the eight volume book than the one I made before.
Contact: tedorigawa.bookmakers@gmail.com
Wednesday Jun 13, 2018
Wednesday Jun 13, 2018
In the last week I printed out one copy of Feeding Vicki’s Corpse and may require two more copies. I plan to give them to friends whose names have been attached to fictional characters in the novel. It is ready to be bound, now, along with Calvado, The Priests of Hiroshima, The Venetian Slime Woman, and, perhaps, another edition of Frankenstein. Frankenstein may also end up as an ebook.
An acquaintance has asked to see a copy of a diary I made for 2018. She may want to buy one for 2019. So, to please her and to have samples of my work, I will be making two samples: one coptic and one encased, like a normal book.
And finally, I made a new cover for Stealing November which used to be called Eating November’s Ruins but that title, while random, didn’t fit the context of the novel, which is more attuned to theft than consumption.
The older version was lighter and the red & yellow band was horizontal while this one more closely matches the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s flag minus the yellow star. Which one do you like? Which one is more... inticing?
Wednesday Jun 06, 2018
Wednesday Jun 06, 2018
A writing update. First, I have finished Feeding Vicki’s Corpse! Second, I am half-way through Eating November’s Ruins. Third, I need to finish Giapan and Botchan’s Bartender. When I finish these three novels I will have 14 novels available for the reading audience. I hope to find a reading audience, too.
Eating November’s Ruins involves a high school student who travels to the Congo to experience life and ends up very close to death. I’m about half way finished. The colors of the Congolese flag are repeated on the cover, by the way.
Giapan is about a Japanese ronin who ends up in Cervantes-era Spain (1600 or so) just before the Spanish Armada and his involvement in religion, a nun, and art. It’s about 2/3rds finished.
Botchan’s Bartender is a murder mystery involving a small town and all of the gossip and rumors that go with that when a stranger opens a bar that seems to have no customers. It’s bordering on 2/3rds finished.
Tuesday May 29, 2018
Tuesday May 29, 2018
Writing is an exciting exploration into your characters and their backgrounds. If you are writing a plot-driven novel perhaps you needn’t worry so much about the characters but I write heavily character-driven books and they can sometimes control the plot and story as they wish.
Case in point: In Feeding Vicki’s Corpse I, the writer, assumed the main character - McCorkle, retired Boston policeman - was haunted by the death of his wife. In the course of writing the novel, I was informed that his wife wasn’t dead, but his daughter was.
Now, the woman with McCorkle has changed from a girlfriend to his actual real and very much alive wife. So who died? In keeping with the rest of the characters and plots of the novel, I was equally informed that the dead person in Boston, the death of which sent McCorkle across the country, was Vicki, his daughter.
Feeding Vicki’s Corpse is Book Two of the Oregon Coast Duology. The first book, spoken of a bit in Episode 173: Mistakes, is City of Cocks (with a rooster motif, by the way.)
Monday May 21, 2018
Monday May 21, 2018
Today I talk about two kinds of book covers: the book cover artist’s design that has thought and work in it and the bookbinder’s cover that has thought, work, experiment, and defeat and victory in it. I have been experimenting with both. The book artist cover is more difficult than inlays and insets.
I also talk about a Work in Progress titled Eating November’s Ruins. A novel of discovery for the protagonist that takes place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and, specifically, on the Congo River and the city of Goma on Lake Kivu. Illusions and references to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness are spread throughout the book, but the protagonist knows nothing about it, of course.
tedorigawa.bookmakers@gmail.com
facebook.com/tedorigawa
Tuesday May 15, 2018
Tuesday May 15, 2018
First, my facebook page (now that people are leaving it) Facebook.com/tedorigawa.
I have access to PhotoShop and the learning curve seems quite lengthy, at least for me. Do I want to play with it or should I forgo the joy and stick with sewing, binding, writing, and printing out my novels? Given the amount of time in a day (24 hours) I might let others have the thrill of Photoshop.
Speaking of novels, I have a new cover for The Priests of Hiroshima (a time-traveling love story that takes place in 15th century Mainz, Germany and present day, Istanbul). What do you think of it? Too blue?