手取川製本 ~ Tedorigawa Bookmakers

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.

 

Ep. 279: Works In Progress

Bookbinding

This month we’ve struggled through a couple of books, one of which is practice for next year’s daily schedule. Why is it practice? Because today is Valentine’s Day 2023, a little late for this year’s schedule. The other one is a finished blank notebook. 

It’s about 100 pages, has a chiyogami-esque cover with blue spine and fore-edges. It is A5 (pocketbook) with, I believe, 7 signatures. I’ve sent it off to the customer so I can’t check the precise number of signatures. Each page is numbered with the number surrounded by a snarly Rabbit because 2023 is the Year of the Rabbit. And I didn’t want a cutesy bunny.

The recto (right) side is blank but the verso (left) side is graph paper thus designed so the owner can freehand draw on one side and be more precise on the left; or write descriptive narrative on one side or the other.

The practice schedule is a work in progress as I practice fore-edge corner placement because of the corners. It has the same chiyogami-esque cover with black book cloth to protect the edges. Also with a black spine for the same reason. This schedule has nine signatures, is A5 (pocketbook) in size, with a bookmark, and rounded corners. And that’s why I’m practicing. Putting the book cloth on rounded corners is new to me; I, too, am a work in progress.

Fiction

I have a dozen works in  progress in fiction. No. Maybe less than a dozen. I’ve got:

• a short story collection called My Year of Drinking Kanazawa which will have 13 short stories (currently it has seven) based on characters the narrator encounters in bars (This is similar to my Sakate which takes place in one bar and how the female bartender deals with customers of various degrees of stress while reading various novels). The entire background should be black, not with grey stripes top and bottom.

• The Dancer about a Japanese merengue dancer (a supporting character in the Molly Bright kidnapping novel). He is about to win enough money to get back to Japan in order to swindle elderly women of a few yen, a place to eat and sleep, and teach dance to enliven their lives before running into a kidnapping.

• a mystery novel, my first: The Corpse at Oyama Shrine. A bit of trouble figuring out how to structure it so that the reader won’t be able to figure out the criminal before the big denouement.

• an action novel about intergalactic war that is part four of a three part series that I’ve been working on for decades. Or less.

Okay, maybe four works in progress instead of dozens; it just feels like dozens.

Substack

After a bit of a problem uploading anything to Substack, I have chosen to use a different browser as Substack claims they have no problem using the browser I’m using which means maybe my browser is too old? 

Chapter 13 of Heart of November in which our hero discovers a deadly dealer and talking cat is up and running. Please read and enjoy it. You can also read the previous 12 chapters, of course.

Ep. 278: Two Coptic Schedules and a Short Story

Bookbinding

I have completed two A6 (文庫本 / pocketbooks) books. The first colorful one is a practice coptic binding with colorful covers as practice for the second. Both are, as I mentioned before, A6 (4 by 6 inches for our north American brethren who life south of the Canadian border). The colorful one is 100 blank pages. Suitable for scribbling, drawing, or note-taking. I practiced not only the sewing (with a thread that was new to me) but also cover design (?). Not really design, but variety. On the front with the yellow streak, there are four different ingredients: red, red & snowflake ribbon, washi, the yellow streak, and blue. The back is equipped with only three ingredients: blue, a red square, and a yellow ribbon under the square. The green is part of the book board.

The second book, the one I practiced on the colorful one with, is for a client. It is an A6 (4 x 6) schedule with a yearly calendar, thirteen monthly calendars, and a weekly calendar. A total of 9 signatures with 5 folios each for 180 pages total. Blue book cloth with yellow (can barely see the yellow in the photo) thread. I neglected to include a photo of the end papers which, as this is Japan, a chiyogami style paper; very colorful in greens and florals.

Unfortunately, I finished it January 3, three days after the beginning of the new year. Fortunately, in Japan, nobody is busy doing anything until the fourth or fifth except eating (Osechi ryori ~ food traditionally eaten over the New Year holiday), watching TV (Kohaku ~ a popular singing show with competing red vs white teams), and visiting a local and popular shrine so the client wasn’t upset at all. In fact, I just got a postcard from her saying how she loved it. Before finishing it, though, I changed the yellow thread for a blue one that matches the cover.

As you can see, I got my colorful variety of ingredients passion out of my system before I made the schedule.

Fiction

In Fiction! Amazingly I finished what I thought was going to be a novel but turned out to be a novella? or shorter. Called Satan Râins. It is the inner dialogs of the band members, their engineer, and the floor. It’s called Satan Râins because the lead singer/guitarist misspelled reigns. And it is only 18 pages long. Where was my head when I thought it was going to be a novel; it’s not; it’s an anti-novel. Or a short story.

I continue with The Dancer about Merengue from Molly Bright. He is in the Dominican Republic and about to enter a merengue contest where he hopes to win enough money to get back to Japan after a year or more in Italy.

I have started and am currently stuck on two mystery/detective novels centered on Kanazawa. A group of five samaritans investigate crimes in Kanazawa. In the first two mysteries they’re looking into the murders of two females. Not being an avid reader of mysteries, I am having a slow time of it. I’ve begun to read a little bit more mysteries to wet my writing skills. Wish me luck.

 

Ep. 277: The New Crucifixion - Written, Bound, and Mailed

Bookbinding

I’ve completed a few books. First up is my novel The New Crucifixion. Political intrigue made more complex by religious dogma. For a client for Christmas so it’s been sent out hopefully on time but if not, they can read it during the New Year’s holiday season.

It is A5, 148 pages with extra pages advertising other novels Ive written about here (the first chapters of Growing Slurry, Abacus Longing, and Heart of November). As requested by the client, I hasten to add lest people complain about my using clients as advertising. I’m hoping they will order another book, of course. By the way, you can, too. 

Check out my Fiction For Sale and Handmade Books for Sale on the left of this site. I should probably have advertised this long before Christmas, eh?

Next up is a 2023 schedule for a client. It’s B6 in size with nine signatures. I’ll post pictures in the next podcast, if the client agrees. Finally, if I finish it in time, a graph paper notebook; one of a series of 50 that I am slowly working my way through. I think this is number three. Wish me luck.

Fiction

With fiction I have two thoughts: one, I’m writing a lot. Two mysteries/detective stories set in Kanazawa, plus a novel that I’ve mentioned before: The Dancer. Each gets a little bit everyday. Maybe a sentence, maybe a paragraph, maybe a whole chapter. But work on them I do and they are slowly moving forward.

My second thought is, Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. Rushdie ventures into magical realism but also creates words, phrases, and runs words together (runswordstogether) for dramatic effect, picking up the pace, and urging the reader to hurry. But this is not a book review site so I will leave it to you to discover Satanic Verses on your own.

Substack

Speaking of Heart of November, my Substack stack has, as of this podcast, Chapter Ten up and running. You can read Chapters 1 ~ 9 as well, plus musings about writing techniques (dialog, fight scenes). If you wish to make a comment on either the writing techniques or the fiction (Earlier short stories of love and ghosts precede Heart of November) please feel free.

Ep. 276: Books, Novels, and Substack, O My!

Bookbinding

This month, you have three items.

First: An A6 coptic schedule for 2023 complete with a 2023 and a 1938 calendar (the birth year of the client), and monthly and weekly calendars. Nine signatures.

Second: an A5 novel of 12 signatures (182+ pages) titled The New Crucifixions for a client whose father is featured on the cover.

Third: a graph paper blank journal (also A5) for your budding graphic artist friend / master doodler.

Fiction

In fiction, you have a plethora of novels in the throes of being written (or, at least, thought about).

First up: The Dancer, the story of a character (Merengue) from Molly Bright; his origin, why he’s called Merengue, and his life in Italy, the Dominican Republic, and scamming elderly women in Japan up until he falls in with Molly and her crew out to save a kidnapped bomb-building surfer.

Second up: The Sound of Fear, the fourth book in The Fear trilogy; a dystopian future of war and rebels. Matt fights for peace and finds deception and lies.

Third up: (an as-of-yet unnamed and not-thoroughly-thought-out) three detective/murder mysteries set in my current peaceful town of Kanazawa (The Other Kyoto).

Substack

I have started a Substack that will include works-in-progress; thoughts about writing, and a possible podcast (one episode is already up; I’m conflicted about inflicting more listening to the viewers.) 

The Lit Fic (literary fiction) section is already up to nine postings, readings, rather. Seven are short stories collectively titled This Giant Frothy Thing: Lust & Terror in Tokyo.

The other postings (8 & 9) are from Heart of November: A Congolese Tale of Love & Murder. From here on out until it is complete, expect more of Heart of November (an homage to Heart of Darkness) in which the hero encounters drug dealers, rapists, and dancers in the Congo. Afterwards, he is assigned Heart of Darkness in his high school English class.

Please have a read of my Substack postings; hope you enjoy them.

Ep. 275: Two More Notebooks Plus Novel Novel

Bookbinding

In the past week or so two things have happened: First, the sun has stopped torturing the northern hemisphere so my studio/house/city/country is not sweltering under 100 degree temperatures any more; this is good, in case you were wondering.

Second, I completed two blank notebooks. Both are pocketbook size (for the American viewer) or A6 (for the rest of the world) with approximately 100 pages. Both have straps to keep them closed. One has a bluish purple-ish cover while the other sports a green cover. The endpapers match the covers in color if not in style. Both are coptic bound so the author/artist who purchases them can use the entire page. 

The blue one has protrudences (outdents?) on the cover for a more tactile experience; three vertical columns and a modified ampersand (&) toward the bottom. 

In addition, I’m sewing up a B6 graphic paper notebook. I’m leaning toward making the cover a centipede cover. Hope I do. I want to see how it turns out.

Fiction

The Dancer, for which I have no cover, the novel about Merengue from Molly Bright, continues unabated! He is learning to dance both the tango and merengue and a variety of Italian-based dances; he excels, according to his dance teacher, in the merengue. He is paired with an Italian high school student who embodies the passion, joy, and spirit of dance; Lucinda by name. First, he dances in Bari, Italy; next he finds a missing CD player while learning bachata in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic.

Also, in a rare bit of perspiration, four books I have already written are being edited (by myself) for speed, flavor, and action. The three are a series with the overriding title of The Fear (Fear Zero, Fear Itself, Fear the Dead, and Sound of Fear.) Yes, a trilogy with four books; not a problem, is it?

Plots:

The Fear tetralogy is sci-fi. Earth is run by a Conglomerate that controls Everything. They are battling the Jeeters from Jupiter’s moon Io. The main character, Matt, was imprisoned at the age of ten for murdering his mother, but now, he’s a master sergeant in the Conglomerate army vs the Jeeters and is charged with finding The Spy! He’s also searching for his friend from prison, Doro Ferrell, who was severely wounded in battle.

Ep. 274: Dancer Plus Three Books

Bookbinding

I have had a productive day, yes! Earlier in my life I folded six signatures of A5 paper into A6 size paper, made some covers, and waited. Yesterday, I put the covers and the paper together to form a blank notebook. Two of them. 

Both have straps to keep the notebook closed. Both have Japanese-style endpapers that coordinate with the covers. One book is yellow with green/yellow/light blue endpapers while the other notebook is red and blue with reddish-blue endpapers.

Meanwhile, earlier I printed out an unusual schedule: it starts in August and ends in March or April. There are only 18 pages (including yearly calendars for 2022 and 2023) and graph papers.

For both the red blank notebook and the yellow one, I used coptic binding because, since they are blank, the user will be able to use the entire page. Unlike Japanese binding which doesn't allow the page to open fully.

Speaking of Japanese binding. I used it for the August-March schedule since it is single sheets of B5. I added a bit of paper on the spine edge to allow the book to open more fully than with traditional Japanese binding.

Fiction

In Molly Bright there is a character named Merengue. He is a Japanese businessman who abandons the Japanese way of life and learns to dance. He walks everywhere and runs into Molly in Miyazaki. I have started a novel about him called The Dancer. He quits his job, moves to Italy and learns to dance. He has adventures as he travels to Cuba and the Dominican Republic and back to Japan where he takes up life as a vagabond/scammer who entices rich women to give him enough money to live on for a few months. 

In The Dancer is an Italian high school student, Lucinda, who learns dancing with Merengue. She becomes a successful dancer and dance teacher. At the end of Molly Bright, she and Merengue meet again.