手取川製本 ~ Tedorigawa Bookmakers

Ep. 289: Cardboard & How I Start a Novel

Bookbinding

I discovered cardboard. Not originally, but in my stack of leftovers and the myriad boxes that my local grocery store piles up after receiving shipments of everything from drinks to bananas. More importantly, I’ve started to use them in my bookbinding. Yea! Free supplies!

Last month I made two French link stitch blank notebooks wherein I used cardboard strips to strength the covers. The covers are usually paper folded over to match the size of the book. Flexible but not suitable for what I want to do with the books: write on them while sitting with them on my lap.

This month I made the cover completely cardboard. An A6-size blank notebook with 140 pages.With two colors of thread: green and blue. The front has symbols for the box it came in: no water, no sharp objects, and be careful? hold it in your hands?

This might be used in a foreign language study milieu rather than the red brocade one I made last month. (Visible below)

Ficition

Still! Still working on Heart of September. Will this cauldron of confusion never end? However, it is progressing. Slowly but moving forward. Maybe toward the end. Unfortunately, I have already thought of a companion piece, a novel whose main character is Amelia, one of the main characters in Heart of September. Whether this novel comes to fruition or not is questionable. I should concentrate on finishing my current work in progress.

Speaking of coming up with stories, I am attracted to the story of a novel in several ways. The most common, for me, is to envision a character and try to find a situation that fits the character. For example: once I saw in my imagination a Japanese artist wandering around Spain looking at art. I put him in 17th century Spain, where he meets Cervantes and has an adventure with two body guards and a disgraced nun. The novel, Giapan, uses Don Quixote in several ways: plot, characters, Cervantes, and Cervantes’ style of tangents. 

Another way a story slaps me across the face is by using dialog. I hear, again in my imagination, a conversation between two or three people and have to find a place where they could be. I had an entire dialog between a man and a robot once. I decided the man would be a blimp pilot and he was spying on his girlfriend but the blimp was controlled by a robot; a robot with an attitude. The novel, A Year Without Days, evolved into a conspiracy of religious scammers and how the man and his girlfriend had to stop them from bombing places in Tokyo.

Ep. 288: Fast Change

Bookbinding

My first year in Japan I was surprised at how fast the seasons changed. One day it’s summer and Boom! the next day it’s fall with a drastic fall (pun?) in temperature. Over the decades I’ve gotten used to it. But this year of record high temperatures? September 30 it was about 33˚ (96˚) with humidity in the high 50s. October 2? About 20˚ (68˚) with the humidity in the mid-50s.

Which meant working in my work space was tolerable. And I got two books cased in.

The first book, an A6 100-page blank notebook, found me practicing the French Link Stitch after a long time of not using it. Five signatures of five folios each were stitched onto a brocade-like thick paper that was folded over. I added a chopped up ticket to a music performance here in town, keeping the location, time, and seat assignment. I don’t remember the exact concert but feel like it was probably a chorus group or two.

I stitched this book twice. The first time it was too loose. I also made a couple of mistakes inserting the thread into its proper place. I took it apart, glued in some cardboard to make the covers stiffer (so I can hold it in my lap), and re-sewed it. Much better, I think.

It is destined to be my notebook for learning a foreign language; foreign to me, native to native speakers.

The second book is a B6 100-page blank notebook but with the thread doubled up for a thicker and tighter stitch. Again with five signatures of five folios each. I used a link stitch on four stations and the French Link Stitch on one, near the bottom, for an artistic flair.

I covered it with a used envelope from a local university and added cardboard to make the cover stronger and stiffer. This book is destined to be a art/doodle/sketch notebook as it opens quite flat and is of a reasonable size. 

I have a third book on my workbench. It will be 140 pages, A6, blank notebook using a French Link Stitch (which for some reason I insist on capitalizing), with an experimental cardboard cover. Hopefully. 

Fiction

Still working on Heart of September, which I hoped to finish in September, but it had other plans. Re-reading sections I find not just typos and confusion but instances, sentences, and dialogs that hinder or slow down the plot, the action, or the emotion. I need to fix these before sliding on to the next chapter, paragraph,   or sentence. 

For instance, one of the main characters (A French drug smuggler who calls himself different names depending on who he’s talking to – Tristram, Joseph – but his main nom de pseudonym is Kurtz. Kurt Kurtz), is driving a car. 

An innocent act anywhere, including in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Except to get to the city (Goma) where the main action takes place, he flew. Where’d he get the car? I had to devise a scene or dialog about him getting a car. One that fits five people and their luggage. And that he doesn’t mind abandoning when the going gets tough.

 

Ep. 287: Hot

Bookbinding

Nado. Nothing. Zip. Why? A perfectly good reason why.

My bookbinding studio doesn’t have air conditioning and like most of the planet, Kanazawa is hot. Hotter than some other places but cooler than a few (like Texas, which is on fire). 

Rather than sit and sweat a bucket load in the first five or six minutes – which would dampen the paper and make it ew ugly with sweat stains — I’ve turned to reading and writing more. In an air conditioned room in my house or the local library.

Fiction

First, I’ve been editing one-fifth of my Calvado Pentalogy, Calvado, in hopes of making it available on Apple Books soon. Within this year. Just in time for Christmas shopping! I hope. I’m also going to edit the other four-fifths to make the entire pentalogy available for your reading pleasure within this, maybe, decade.

In Calvado, Calvado, the female protagonist, has a lucrative job as a fashion model but is also a second-year medical student.

Mack is a delinquent and singer who believes he is followed by Death. All who care for him seem to die. Therefore, he avoids any attachment to anyone. But he meets Calvado. 

The Calvado Pentalogy follows Calvado as she moves through time and space. She’s in Venice (twice) in the present (in The Venetian Slime Woman) and in the 1400s (in The Idiot Runs). She’s in Istanbul both in the present and the past (in The Priests of Hiroshima).  And she’s in Gutenberg Iowa in the present when a typesetter falls in love with her even though she’s several decades younger than him (in Tristram’s Printer).

Second, I’ve been writing and rewriting Heart of September in hopes of finishing it soon. Like this year. Although the end is fast approaching. Not the novel, the year. The end of the year is fast approaching. I’ve juggled, added, deleted, and severely edited chapters to make the whole thing fit together much better. 

I’ve added atmosphere and details, caused more of the Congo to appear, and raised the importance of certain characters (the snake lady, for example). 

Plus I’ve renamed it again back to Heart of September as there are so many references to Heart of Darkness I had to make sure you all understood I know there are references to Heart of Darkness.

I’ve also been writing the final few chapters of a novel I finished some time ago but needs to be improved called Molly Bright. This novel is about a woman who is kidnapped. Three unlikely people decided to save her. The unlikely people are:

• a buyer for a major housewares company; her name is Molly Bright.
• a Ivy League drop out who has spent the last year begging for food in India
• a dancer.

Also involved are a university couple whose daughter was kidnapped, a former hitman for the Mafia who moved to Japan to run a cheap ramen shop, and, of course, the two (formerly six, but four were killed) kidnappers.

Ep. 286: My Year of Drinking Kanazawa

Bookbinding

Having finished My Year of Drinking Kanazawa I cased it in. Without a few mistakes and some successes. First, the spine is too large by a half a millimeter. Second, the space between the spine and the front and back covers is too small. It is 3mm when it should be about 5mm. While the book opens adequately it is not sincere like a book of short stories should be; it is mocking us.

I like the black cover and the white band toward the bottom that announces, on the front, the title. There’s nothing on the back. I considered putting my name on it but decided to be humble. Besides, it didn’t look good.

At the same time as I cased it My Year of Drinking Kanazawa I also cased in its companion piece: Sakate. This is much smaller (in page count) than MYDK. The book boards are necessarily thinner and cover itself nearly monotone. I experimented with a vertical band with the title in both Japanese (さかて) and English (Sakate, of course) while forgetting to include, possibly in a larger form the other Japanese ( 酒手). I slapped my name on a horizontal band on the back which is where I got the idea that it didn’t look good. Maybe a small horizontal band on the front? 

Fiction

Both MYDK and Sakate feature Ishikawa saké and cityscapes. However, the reader, you, hopefully, doesn’t need to know about either to enjoy the story/plot/characters.

Whereas Sakate takes place in one bar with one bartender who encounters a variety of customers, MYDK takes place in 13 different bars, 14 different bartenders, and one customer (the unnamed narrator). 

While Sakate was realistic, MYDK is sprinkled with magic and spookiness. Not all the stories have ghosts or strange coincidences; just enough to spice up the reading experience. I hope. 

Secondly, while working on Soul of September (which was formerly called Heart of November) I had what you might call an epiphany. Parts of the novel were completely unnecessary: they didn’t move the plot along, they didn’t develop the main character in any unique way, they didn’t illustrate much at all for the reader. So I jettisoned them.

Then, I realized a couple of chapters could be reduced into one chapter while simultaneously reducing the wordiness, verbiage, and ploddiness of the story as a whole. So I combined them, reworded them, and enjoyed myself. 

I dare not announce that Soul of September will be finished soon, but the major obstacles (as listed above) have been corrected. I’m hoping no major hiccups will appear in the next few chapters. But there probably will be. Fingers crossed, wood knocked on, and all that. I might change the name back to Heart of September.

Help!

Support your local podcaster and bookbinder/writer!

Go to Apple Books and look at what George Stenson has available for your reading pleasure.

This week: Two related mystery novels: City of Cocks and Feeding Vicki’s Corpse. 

A small coastal Oregon town has a murder on its hands. They turn to a retired Boston policeman to help them solve it. But he has a ghost following him; or so he thinks.

In City of Cocks, in the same coastal Oregon town, a disgraced businessman must rely on his wife and her drunk poet friend to save him from a life in prison. 

The poet sees things that aren’t there, making him an unreliable witness.

Ep. 285 Small Books and Writing

Bookbinding

I made a small book as practice in making small books. It’s about 75 pages and measures 100 mm x 75 mm which, for our Imperial users, is about 3.9 inches x 2.9 (3 15/16 by 2 61/64) inches. The cover is wrapped in red paper but there’s a chiyogami stripe down the front cover that doesn’t spread itself to the back cover. It has a bookmark so if you’ve lost your page, you can find it. 

It’s blank so you can use it for whatever purposes you choose. It’s also smaller than the palm of my hand and I have small hands; or, according to everyone I know, small fingers.

Fiction

I’ve been writing on three or two things. First, Heart of November which I’ve decided to call Soul of September. I’m making the story clearer. For me, at least. Hopefully for the reader as well. Second, My Year of Drinking Kanazawa is finished except for a small bit. Next I will print it out, case it in, and make it available to those who wish to read it. Third, a detective novel that stemmed from one of the stories in My Year of Drinking Kanazawa. Detective/mystery novels are a technique of writing that I am not so confident in; I’m learning, though. I hope.

In this episode I will outline how I write. It will be quite simple. There are five basic steps I take in my writing practice.  

• Dialog
• Action
• Emotion
• Dialog Tags
• Drama

I write the dialog first. After the dialog I bless the characters with some action. Meaning, if two people are talking, the reader can see them doing something. Pouring a drink, looking out a window, frowning.

After the action, I sprinkle some emotion on the characters. Sometimes the action and dialog match the emotion, sometimes it’s the opposite; whatever makes the story strong and the characters more believable.

After the emotional support is slapped in, I read it for the dialog tags. Those “...,” she said lines.  If I set the story up properly, you won’t need the dialog tags. Also, if the characters have a distinct enough speaking voice, you won’t need the tags.“Y’all come uppa my house, now, hear?” vs “You’re welcome to come visit me at my place, if you want. All of you.” 

Once the dialog is set, the action is proper, the emotion guaranteed, then I read the fiction for pacing, for dramatic affect, for speed of story. Once those are all set, I’m pretty much done. For the time being. Until I have other thoughts about plot, character, location, emotion, and everything else. I am no longer a One-Draft-I’m-Done kind of writer.

Sometimes I do all five things at the same time. Sometimes I space it out over the days, weeks, months, or, in the case of Soul September, years. 

I hope this helps you with whatever you’re writing. What works for me might not necessarily help you, but I hope it does.

Ep. 284: June Blank Journal Soul of September

Bookbinding

This week you have an A6 pocketbook blank journal, similar to the other A6 pocketbook blank journals I have been making but with the addition of two pages With Print!

The first page has the title of the book: Tedorigawa Bookmakers and the date: June 2023. The final page has the Tedorigawa Bookmakers logo. That’s it. The other pages, as you can probably guess from the title are blank.

The front is mostly green book cloth with two chiyogami-esque strips plus a red stripe that surrounds the entire book made of red book cloth. Yes, we are trying to use up as many leftovers, scraps, and bits that we can while still practicing the art of making books. 

This book I like. It fits in your pocket (if you have any) and is very handy for drawing, doodles, notes, or any other activity you have in mind.

A previous book you can listen to about in Episode 281: How many mistakes can I make, I have made into a longish to-do list, interspersed with language tips I’ve picked up in Spanish and Japanese.

Included in that To-Do list is WIP Long Term Goals which includes finishing novels. Like The Dancer, The Sound of Fear, Heart of November, and, now, The Corpse at Oyama Shrine.

Fiction

Yes, I have started yet another novel The Corpse at Oyama Shrine but in my Work-in-Progress Long-Term Goals (soon to be shortened to WIPLTG, I suspect) we have Edit, Write, and Finish Heart of November. But also on that growing list is Edit, Print, and Case in Sakate and My Year of Drinking Kanazawa.

But what have I really been working on in the last week? Heart of November. And why have I been working on it?

Because several months ago I thought it was finished. I thought I wrote the final scene of the main character asking another high school student what Heart of Darkness was about since he lived much of it.

And I did. I did write the final chapter. But I sort of missed writing about five or eight chapters before the final chapter. In re-reading what I wrote, I discovered a lot of confusion; on my part, of course. So I rewrote what comes before the final chapter; expanded parts, made parts a separate chapter, deleted some parts. And rearranged parts in order to make the plot move faster.

Almost finally, I changed the title. Originally it was Eating November. Then it was Heart of November as a homage to the novel it resembles: Heart of Darkness. Now, I’m contemplating using Soul of September or Heart of September primarily because the action takes place in September after school starts in the US.

Finally, I started a Substack of Heart of November until I realized the book was not finished, so, once I finish it, I can restart the Substack. 

Ep. 283: Two A6 Notebooks

Bookbinding

First, the new music for our intros and outros. It’s called Who’s Using Who by the Mini-Vandals and downloaded from YouTube Music. Last week I wrote it was probably downloaded from Pixabay. I was wrong; it’s from YouTube.

Here we have two blank notebooks who are the same only in size. A6 and 100 pages. the covers vary dramatically with one multi-colored and the other veering toward the monotone side of the color wheel.

The first, on the Front: the Matsushima (松島) one is coptic-bound with three different colors on the front and one basic color (green) on the back. Also on the front is part of a ticket from the Viennese tram system, a cut out from a takeaway menu showing the website of a Kanazawa bakery (Hug Mittens), and, of course, a large Matsushima rescued from a box or pamphlet extolling the virtues of a locally brewed saké. At least it’s brewed in Japan. 

ver, On the Back: the back is not the same as the front. There is a thick hemp string (currently invisible) which was added for variety and spunk that was added after this photo was taken. It was added in the small holes you can see between the coptic binding threads which are blue (to match the blue of the front).

While the front of the book has three major colors (red, blue, green) the back has a green book cloth with two stripes of chiyogami-esque paper running down the left side of the back and a strip of green book cloth separating the chiyo-gami paper (gami being paper, I just said chiyo paper paper.)

This one, the Here! book, fits quite nicely into my hands and is superbly done, if I do say so myself. 

The second A6 blank notebook is more subtle and subdued. It is cased in with a book cloth that was given to me by a store owner over 20 years ago. I wandered into his stationery shop and asked him if he had any book cloth. He didn’t know what book cloth was but decided this whitish-brown paper would fit the bill and shoved five or six sheets into my hands. He was right. They make excellent book cloths. This is the last of the sheets he gave me.

On the front cover are three details liberated from a business card for a local coffee shop. I have forgotten the name of the shop as I don’t drink coffee, but there’s a tiny map if you’re interested. The shop is in Kanazawa, if that helps.

The top shows a train station, the middle a highway, and the bottom, with the exuberant “Here!” plastered to it, the location of the coffee shop. With those three hints it’s practically impossible to find it, however.

The back is blank of decals or other adornments.

Fiction

Last podcast I allowed as how I was finished with My Year of Drinking Kanazawa. It is waiting for me to look at it again and put it up on Indesign to make it into a real book. Among those 13 short stories the narrator mentions, twice, reading a book by a friend of his called The Corpse At Oyama Shrine, a murder mystery solved by a private investigator and his henchmen and woman. He mentions it twice for when he started reading it and when he finished reading it three months later. So, I started to write it.

I got three or four chapters into it and thought, hmmm. How can this be improved and not a copy of Columbo or Sherlock Holmes? I started over, adding more intensity. Yes, before finishing either Heart of November, The Dancer, or The Sound of Fear, I’m embarking on another Journey.

In one short story, the narrator begins to tell the plot but the bartender asks a good question, why is the PI investigating and not letting the police do their work? This is a question I have asked myself as I begin re-thinking and rewriting those first few chapters.

Thus I have written another short story collection and ignored the other works in progress while starting a fourth work-in-progress. I need more hours in the day or less coffee or fewer ideas. Naaah. I’ll just plug along.

Thank you for reading this. Hope to see you again on

the next blog/podcast.

Ep. 282: Four Notebooks And Finished Fiction!

NewMusic: Who’s Using Who by the Mini Vandals

(probably found on Pixabay Music)

Bookbinding

In the last weeks or so four A5-sized blank notebooks were created. They were created using scraps I had left over from other projects in a failed attempt at reducing leftovers and scraps. Making books and covers creates more leftovers for future use. Sometimes.

They are all 100 pages and Coptic bound for two reasons. First, Coptic binding requires a lot less glue and I was, for some odd reason, trying to conserve on glue. Second, my printer isn’t working up to snuff so I’m not worrying about typography or printing anything which frees me up to experiment with different books. In the coming weeks (hopefully) I’ll tell you about a Small Book.

They didn’t take me too long to make. Maybe I made one every two or three days, time and real life permitting. And I only made one major mistake on one of the books.

One the last signature, of course, I sewed the Coptic bindings incorrectly and tried to save it; I failed. But the book is still useful as a blank notebook. It's just that the inside back cover is pitifully ugly.

The Green one at top is a paper I’ve had forever. And by forever I mean FOREVER. Well, at least 20 years. It’s a thickish paper with a great feel to it. It was also, if memory serves and I doubt that it does, fairly cheap. Why I kept it for 20+ years, I have no idea.

The Octopus one – purplish-blue-grey – with 88 (in Spanish) and the Red one with Save plus 97% UPF are the same book. The 88 is a Kanazawa restaurant serving, naturally, Spanish food. I stole the Save from the American Internal Revenue Service (IRS) which is pushing for citizens to make donations (taxes) online to Save paper. The UPF 50+ is from a hat.

Except for that one with the ugly inside back cover, the notebooks are good. I shipped them off to my wholesaler and she received them with, uh, trepidation and a touch of annoyance. But confident she can place them. Somewhere. Maybe.

Fiction

I had a thought. Bear with me now, it will take a bit to explain. My collection of short stories (My Year of Drinking Kanazawa) has 13 stories. While doing something completely different, I discovered that there were 15 Japanese emperors during the Edo era (1603 ~ 1868). I thought it would be interesting, and a second layer of intrigue, if the characters (all bar owners or tenders of said bars) were named after those emperors. I had to read about them to see if I could had a third layer of value to the stories; if the bartenders or the narrator was involved in something a emperor was involved in.
That didn’t happen. Plus someone said some conservative people might be upset that I had usurped an emperor’s name for a mere bartender. Fortunate. Changing the names, even with a Find Replace function would be tiring.

Despite all that, I changed three characters to three of the emperors’ during the Edo era not because there is any relationship between character and emperor but because I liked the names.

Also, I finished all the stories and the complete set is a mere 50+ pages with 13 short stories all taking place in a bar. With alcohol. But,

Finished! Yeah!

Want to read it? Let me know.

Ep. 281: How Many Mistakes Can I Make?

Bookbinding

How many mistakes can I make on one blank A6 notebook with 200 pages bound with perfect binding and still get a book I’m relatively pleased with? The short answer is: Lots!

• First and minor mistake: I counted 200 pages. I mistakenly assumed the book would have 200 pages. But I only counted sheets, not sides so it actually has 400! pages. Gads.

• Second visible mistake: The front book board and the back book board are not the same size. Off by a millimeter or two or half. But I can see it and the book doesn’t stand upright by itself.

• Third Really Big Mistake: The endpapers are Both! the wrong size and incorrectly attached. I attached the endpapers to the entire inside cover rather than leave a border. That made the part of the endpaper that attaches to the text block too big. Ugly even after I attempted to repair them.

But generally speaking I like the book. It has three different book covers on the front plus four attachments (Enjoy, a diagram, and kanji), and the spine is a book cloth from a previous book so it has part of the previous book’s title and part of my name on the front & back. And it’s a handy size, fits in the palm of my miniature hands.

Fiction

Exciting times in the writing factory! Working on My Year of Drinking Kanazawa I had a revelation and jumped on it. I completely rewrote the first story as it didn’t fit the structure of the other short stories. While working on it, I had an additional epiphany about two other stories and revised them. I believe I’m 90% through with the collection.

Two nexts on my agenda: ① I’ll finish off the last story which is longer and more convoluted than the others. ② I’ll let it fester for a while before looking at it again and try to improve it by eliminating Tell scenes with Show scenes and action verbs versus passive or boring verbs. And more descriptions of the weather in Kanazawa during the year.

Exciting times ahead!

Ep. 280: A Massive Wait UpEnded!

Every three months is a schedule, isn’t it?

Bookbinding

This week in Bookbinding we have two A6 (pocketbook) blank notebooks with colorful covers. Mostly. Why? Because my  printer broke. This saves you all the time and effort of reading what is inside but gives you the opportunity to write whatever you wish! A win-win situation for all.

The First Book is A6 blank notebook with a Japanese protruding rectangle on the front covered in a Chiyogami paper. 100 pages (five signatures of five folios each). Suitable for drawing, notes, and scheduling podcasts. 

On the back we have a small protruding item; a hanger from a local internationally known shop. These two notebooks are coptic bound which means the front and back covers can touch each other and the book can lay flat, making it suitable for drawing and using the entire page rather than up to the spine edge.

The spine is covered with sticky black book cloth; the kind you don’t need glue for. I figured the black cloth coupled with the pale greenish cover would make the Chiyogami stick out more.

This book was two or three things to me. One: an experiment using doubled up thread. A bit tricky at first but useful. I think I’ll loop the thread over itself in future bookbinding adventures.

Two: an attempt to match stations of the thread with the book; painstaking measurements were required but for the most part faithfully carried out. Three: make the pages tighter. This, too, was a success.

The Second Book was fun. It is also A6 (pocketbook size), coptic bound, 100 pages, blank notebook but with dramatically different covers. The front is predominantly red with the same Chiyogami-esque paper on the spine edge with another design on the fore edge. Plus a bit of an envelop with International Priority Airmail printed on it.

Yes, as a matter of fact, I was using whatever materials I could muster up. Scraps of  Chiyogami paper, book cloth, random items garnered from whatever caught my fancy. This is evident when we examine the back of the second book. It has a larger portion of the design that is on the front of the book in a smaller size.

It also has the Chiyogami design on the fore edge with a cut out of a bell with animal shapes closer to the spine edge. Where I got that from, I don’t know or remember.

This was also double-threaded but I pulled the thread through itself to make it a bit more secure. I liked it and will try it again the next time I’m make a double-threaded coptic-bound book.

Which might be soon. It is tourist season and I have ideas for a book tourists might like. And a couple of stores that might stock my books. Fingers crossed.

Fiction

Yes, I have written fiction. In fact, I’ve worked on a couple of the novels I talked about earlier, but not oddly Heart of November. I have mostly worked on My Year of Drinking Kanazawa; research is invaluable. More importantly, I only need to finish three of the thirteen stories. Of the three, one is nearing completion (and is the longest and last). It is also the thirteenth store, a bonus story. Like the thirteenth donut in a baker’s dozen.

This collection of short stories has a bit of a Twilight Zone vibe to it. Ghosts. Strange occurrences. Unsolved mysteries. 

The other books are coming along. Slowly, slowly, like a thirsty turtle in the middle of a expressway. 

Thanks for reading. Catch the podcast. Read a book.