手取川製本 ~ Tedorigawa Bookmakers

Ep. 160 Bookbinding Podcasts

Podcasts about bookbinding and related arts. All available on iTunes

Susan Mills hosts Bookbinding Now

Steve Miller hosts Book Artists and Poets

Keri Schroeder hosts Books in the Wild
Me, Tedorigawa in Japanese 手取川製本 which is Tedorigawa Bookmakers or Tedorigawa Seihon.

 

Ms Schroeder’s podcast is the newest while Book Artists and Poets is the oldest. Ms Mills and I are in the middle somewhere.

Still working on making ebooks but I got sidetracked recently into writing a series of related short-stories heavily dependent on the characters (not so much plot, lots of people stuff.) It will, of course, be made into an ebook and either sold off or offered as a free-give-away for some reason. It's called The Giant Frothy Thing: Tales of Tokyo Love and Horror.

 

Ep. 159: Busy E-Booking

Yes, I’ve been busy but that's not excuse to here's Episode 159 full of excuses. In the month since the last podcast I have managed to:

• bind five books
• set ten books on iBooks Author
• write two novels
• am writing two more novels.
• wrote and put on iBooks Author a Zine called The Diary of a Dead Cat Quarterly.

And hoping to get everything uploaded to iBooks and Amazon in the near near near future.

I am also thinking of starting an email list and provide subscribers with free Dead Cats. Hmmm. Sounds a little bit less than appetizing. 

The Diary of a Dead Cat Quarterly

Too Much Curiosity for Nine Lives

• The Art of Kanazawa ~ about the arts found in Kanazawa, Japan.
  
  
• White Sticks & Blind Dogs ~ about the white sticks used by blind people.
  
  
• Sandwich ~ about Sandwich: the food, the man, and the islands.
  
  
• Soup ~ about, surprisingly, soup and David Bowie. Worry not, he’s related.
  
  
• Terra Non Est Centra Mundi ~ about the evolution of Earth from the center of the Universe to the third rock from a mediocre star. (On iBooks now! Search for Terra Non Est Centra Mundi.)
  
  
• Canals ~ about famous canals and their histories.
  
  
• Caged! ~ About Xenia Cage, artist, bookbinder, box maker, lover.

 

 

Abacus Longing, the First Chapter~ Episode 158

A novel not easy to read quickly as it slips between three stories. The three stories are:

Teenage computer programmer who believes she’s being stalked,

High school math genius and her manga artist friend,

An alien who is her own reincarnated changeling self who crash lands on Earth.

Nothing is at it seems. Or it is really easy to read because it isn’t difficult at all. Abacus Longing, the novel I wrote while writing the previous two novels The Nuns of Nañao and The Tokyo Tunnel Girl.

Actually, all three novels are not exactly linear. The Tokyo Tunnel Girl skips between two stories, at least: the woman in the tunnel, the man trying to find her, and the conspiracy cover up story. Okay, three stories.

The Nuns of Nañao jumps between time (three pasts and one now), places (Stalingrad, Mongolia, Brooklyn, Yokohama, and the tunnels of Tokyo), and people (the now-Russian, the then-Russian, Death as a sunbather in New Jersey). 

However, Abacus Longing careens between stories like an out-of-control UFO crash landing South of Seattle while a book about birds reveals intimate secrets about the reader to the reader as a manga-artist scribbles a story about a UFO!

This episode is the first chapter of Abacus Longing and a very short chapter it is, too, wherein we meet our first protagonist, the teenage computer genius

For more on this book, check out Episode 154, below.

Nuns of Nañao ~ Ep. 157

This is The Nuns of Nañao: A Reincarnate Loved Story. It is not a reincarnated love story because the people are the same; they just flip between bodies. In the previous novel I wrote, The Tokyo Tunnel Girl, a character disappears - both from the plot and from the book. This is the follow-up for that character. He is called, in both books, The Russian.

First we have Otto who falls in love with Nina. Otto is a Russian tank commander in World War Two. First he is in Mongolia with Zhukov and then is transferred to Stalingrad, where he and his two comrades, Raul and The Saint, die. They also meet the Angel of Death, of course, because they die.

He then appears as a watchmaker in Brooklyn where he meets a young scam artist who he dubs The Russian. They age together and one day in the park, Otto sees the Angel of Death again. He slips into The Russian’s body just before the angel takes him away.

Otto, now going by the name The Russian, ends up in Japan. After a bit of confusion, he straightens out and starts exploring; always looking for Nina.

Cover is a detail from a Hiroshige woodblock print, Man on horseback crossing a bridge on the Kiso Highway or, in the lingua franca of Japan: 木曾街道六拾九次之内 長久保（広重）.

While writing this book, I got stuck so I started writing another book sort of to get the cobwebs out of my head and get a fresh look on life. This other book turned into Abacus Longing which will be part of our dramatic adventure next time. More info about Abacus Longing can be found down below in Episode 154.

 

Tokyo Tunnel Girl Ep. 156

This is a novel I wrote that started another novel that prompted a third novel. First, The Tokyo Tunnel Girl leaves one character unfinished. Not an important character to the plot but important to the careful reader. Plus the last line of The Tokyo Tunnel Girl asks what happened to this character.

The second novel, The Nuns of Nanao, is about this character called, in both books, The Russian. The Nuns of Nanao describes the adventures of The Russian. First, he is not the Russian. His body has been absorbed by another person. This other person was a Russian tank commander in World War Two until he dies in Stalingrad. After dying, he becomes a watchmaker in Brooklyn until he dies again and becomes the Russian. From the beginning the tank commander is seeking his lost love, Nina. He must travel the face of the earth to find her; he must also transmorph - transform - take over the bodies of a watchmaker and a young man living in Brooklyn.

Now, while writing the Nuns of Nanao I needed to refresh my brain. So I wrote Abacus Longing. More on this novel in Episode 154: Story about a Story.

Today, I read the first chapter of The Tokyo Tunnel Girl. Next week, I present to you the first chapter of The Nuns of Nanao and after that, yes, Abacus Longing. 

Stock? Ep 155

I’m hoping to make enough stock so that when I go to a store to sell them, and if they want to sell them, I have enough to give them. This is, I believe, the first step in making bookbinding and selling my business. Right?

I’ve got a couple of notebooks, touristy notebooks, and a couple of schedule books that are a bit late to be sold. I also have some for next year, which I will introduce to the stores in September or October. Is that too late?

Story About a Story ~ Ep. 154

While writing one novel I got frustrated so I thought I’d write a quick story about strange people and ended up writing another novel. The second novel is called Abacus Longing. It’s about an app developer who thinks she’s being stalked. She finds a thin book and the book has too many incidents and conversations from her life to be a coincidence. The book she finds has two high school characters: a math genius and a manga-artist/graphic novelist. The manga-artist is writing a book about an alien visitor to earth and the homeless scientist she meets. 

Three stories interwoven in one 50,000 word / 200-page book:

• The app developer story,
• the high school math genius/manga-ka story, and
• the alien & scientist story.

Naturally, they all come together at the end when the developer discovers who the stalker is and the nerds discover their true purpose in life. What happens to the Alien and her Scientist buddy? I believe that’s another novel in itself. 

Abacus Longing is currently on my InDesign program being readied for printing out and possible e-book publication via iBooks and, maybe, Amazon. I’d love to get a manga-artist to draw the pictures for the manga part of the book (the alien & scientist bit) before making the ebook. 

The Accordion II ~ Ep. 153

Because of a class I took on the history of Japanese bookbinding, I have become more interested in accordion books which in Japanese are called orihon -folding books; much like origami is folding paper (gami being from kami meaning paper.) So I am making a larger book with writing on both sides. The writing hasn't been decided yet, but it may well be a related series of drawings because a short story on an accordion is hard - well, not hard, but clumsy - to read.

It is similar but different to the pictured accordion book in that the new one - still not finished yet - will, hopefully, be larger and better aligned with better paper.

I cased in four books last week and sold three of them this week. That is an amazing feat for me. If I keep it up, I may make money doing this. Ha! Keep it up. What a fluke this week was. But it made everyone happy.

Next: I have only nine or ten books to case in now. And I finished InDesigning two more. If I were making money, I’d hire me an assistant. That’ll be the day, to quote Buddy.

Next time: A story about a Story called Abacus Longing

 

Semi-Tunnel Book ~ Ep. 152

Another Getting-Out of the Zone called Comfort. As promised: a Semi-Tunnel book instruction Without Pictures! Good luck, I hope I explained it well enough. 

I'm gathing my wits about me to attempt another challenge for myself ~ approaching a small coffee shop to allow me to teach simple bookbinding in simple English (or more complex depending on the students' English level) for a couple of hours. My current plan is to teach a variety of folding structures. They don't require glue or thread. And then a couple of pamphlet books that require only thread. The idea is not to improve their bookbinding skills but to improve their English skills through bookbinding.

But first! I must approach the owner to see if he will allow me to use his shop for a couple of hours during a slow time. The shop only fits five or six people comfortably. If I teach there, he will only be able to sell coffee to my four or five students. If I get that many. 

Let me know if you succeed in making a semi-tunnel book. Or if my explanation was too off to understand.

Making an Orihon / Accordion ~ Ep. 151

I just finished a three week listening course titled Japanese Culture Through Rare Books put out by FutureLearn and it was both informative and inspirational. One style of book in Japan is called the Orihon (折本) which is a folded book. In English it's called an Accordion book. I've never made an accordion book to my knowledge so this course inspired me to make one. Then, not being satisfied with the first one, I made a second one. My second orihon/accordion book is better than the first one.

The first one used blank scrap paper. Just to see if I could do it. The second one uses two of my short stories: The Merchant of Venus and Monkey, Dick, and I. To make an orihon/accordion book we first need to glue individual papers together, then fold it however we want, and add covers. Nice process and fun. The final book is also fun to read. I mean, you can read it while flipping rapidly through the pages.

 The book is about 115 mm wide and 160 mm tall. Slightly larger than A6 (about very roughly 4.5 inches by 6 inches for our north American captives.) It is about 220 cm long when completely folded out. (Again, about 7 feet for those who aren't conversant in the metric system.) And a whole lot of pages (see what I did there? If you’re a Zeppelin fan). It has a thin pinkish strap around it to keep it closed. The front part is the Merchant story and the back part is the Monkey story.

The Merchant of Venus, by the way, is a love / horror story set in another universe where females are created from the fingers of males.  (Not unlike making a female from a rib? Maybe?). The main character is a man who makes females from the fingers of his clients. He has made two wives for himself. Each female, however, as an expiration date: 20 years after creation. To make things livelier, they are born 20 years old. Having made two wives for himself, he has eight fingers. He retires but is blackmailed into making a woman for a government syncophant. But the woman created isn’t interested in the syncophant; she’s interested in the main character. So he has to make another woman from his own fingers, leaving him with seven.

Monkey, Dick, and I is a con artist story about Monkey, a young girl (maybe 11 years old), who has fallen under the tutelage of the homeless and poverty-stricken ex-Navy narrator, the I in the title. Monkey and the narrator convince an old Navy friend (Dick) that Dick is the father and needs to take care of Monkey from now on because she needs a real family, an education, and consistency in her life that homelessness cannot provide. It is unclear in the story who is Monkey’s real dad: the narrator or Dick.

Making these books was a challenge but it is the Year of Getting Out of Our Comfort Zone so it is to be expected. While taking the Rare Book Japanese Culture course, I also learned about the tatamino-mono book (たたみもの) - a fold out book. I made one of those, too.