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Creating Handmade Books and Writing Fiction in Kanazawa, Japan 金沢市
Episodes
Thursday Mar 31, 2022
Thursday Mar 31, 2022
Bookbinding
This month or so I was lazy, I procrastinated, I was lethargic, and sick but in the end I worked harder for four days and cased in three books. Two are notebooks, one with graph paper and the other with nothing.
The notebooks are pocketbook size (A6) with 100 pages in five five-page signatures. One is called The Banana Book of Thoughts and one is called Face. For no apparent reason other than I wanted to name them something.
The third book I cased in is a 272-page 2022-2023 schedule. There are 17 (17!) signatures of four pages each (20 real pages when imposed), and it has about 60 pictures. Every Sunday has a picture and every birthday has a picture. It also has two different colors of thread. Because, well, why not?
This schedule was an experiment in putting on the spine piece. I usually measure the text block and make the spine piece equal to that. This time I measured twice (29mm) and subtracted two 
millimeters (for 27mm). This was the width of the book boards. The book opened very nicely, so I was pleased. I also expanded the width of the hinge between the spine piece and the book board from 5mm to 7mm. Next week: 10mm!
All-in-all, I was pleased with how all three books came out and learned a bit on each one.
Fiction
Two novels are spinning wheels this winter. The first, The Posthumous Autobiography of the Widow Agnes Grout, Death Weaver is struggling to find its center.
It is about a woman in the 1860s onward who can tell when people will die and how. She learns this while weaving, which is her specialty; it's what keeps her family afloat after her husband died.
Most people don't believe her. Even when she predicts the death of a crude weaving mill boss.
I think I'll have to do more research in later 19th century lifestyles in the Lowell, Mass are before it gets uncorked and flows like Spanish festival wine during harvest time.
The other book, Surfing Osaka, (Formerly Molly Bright) is progressing slowly but it is progressing. It is obviously coming close to the end where the good guys find the kidnapped victims and reunites them with what family they have left. But discovering the kidnapped victims is not the point of the novel. The point of the novel is each character discovering something inside them that they want to change. And change they do.
For example, Molly stops being a corporate employee who buys cheap handmade furniture in poor areas and turns to making the furniture herself.
This is an old cover. The new title, which I'm to thrilled about is Surfing Osaka, but it needs something more kidnappish-conspiratorial-character-driven. I'm working on it.
Sunday Feb 20, 2022
Sunday Feb 20, 2022
Bookbinding
I've been working on my computer in an attempt to finish four 2022/2023 schedules and all four schedules are different. Different in:
- Size: A6 (pocket book) to A4 (computer paper);
- Language: Japanese, English, and Japanese & English;
- Layout: from one day for one page, to seven days on one page;
- Photos: from generic touristy to personal
Fiction
Two novels in the making:
• Surfing Osaka (formerly Molly Bright). A chemist is kidnapped by a religious cult to make bombs. A band of strangers set out to save her.
• The Posthumous Autobiography of the Widow Agnes Grout, Death Weaver.
Agnes can see the future when it comes to people she knows dying. She tries to warn them. Some listen to her. Some die anyway. Agnes tries to grow rich with her visions of the future, but she always fails. She is a weaver and makes her living weaving, teaching weaving, and being a fabric/weaving artist.
Sadness
In college and beyond there were three of us. We were, in our minds, witty and creative. One was a poet, one worked on Broadway, and one was me. The poet got a government job which paid the bills but didn't damper his spirit or creativity. I got a job in Japan. The one who worked on Broadway enjoyed life; he traveled, took tours and sailed on cruises to many countries, he enjoyed wine purchased in far-flung places, he collected comic books, he played John-Bonhameseque drums, he knew the best meals in the best restaurants with the best views, and the best desserts. And walked everywhere.
I Zoomed him five days ago. He died this morning. Stage Four Melanoma that spread to his brain, robbing him of his wit and his life. But not our memories of him.
Saturday Jan 22, 2022
Saturday Jan 22, 2022
Bookbinding
This is a paperback-size ( 文庫本 in Japanese, pronounced bunko-bon) junk notebook with an Islamic cover (the flap over the edge protects the textblock) but German (and English) writing on the front. Filled with eight signatures of leftover scrap paper from other projects.
First I cut out ordinary paper as a template for the cover. Next, I put the template on very thin card stock paper to use as a cover. Then, for some inexplicable reason, I glued the template to the card stock. And finally used craft paper as the cover knowing I was going to slap on some left-over papers I had stored up over the decades (the Austrian tram ticket is from, maybe, ten or more years ago).
I made this primarily to practice Islamic binding. Especially gluing in the endpapers on the flap the lies over the front cover. Most corners for covers are cut at a 90˚ angle to the paper. The corners for the flap are not quite so straight forward and I had a bit of hit-and-miss experimenting before I got cut properly.
Fiction
In fiction, as I said last time, I finished a novel (The New Crucifixions) in the first week of December. After that I looked through my messed-up files to see what other fiction I could find lurking about in the computer like digital vampires. I found a novel with great premise that I started about two years ago. I mentioned it here before. It’s called The Posthumous Autobiography of the Widow Agnes Grout: Death Weaver. Agnes was a weaver in Lowell, Massachusetts starting in about 1850 until her death in 2020 at 170 years old. Besides longevity, her main super power is the ability to predict the deaths of people around her and warn them to avoid certain activities or places to avoid death. Not all of the people believe her.
Aside from Agnes, I am working on another novel which was called Molly Bright but I changed it to Surfing Osaka because Molly, while a main character, is not the only character who changes. However, since most of the novel – a kidnapping – takes place in Osaka, I felt it only reasonable to use a different title.
The next installment of Calvado: A Deathly Love Story is up.
Thursday Jan 13, 2022
Thursday Jan 13, 2022
Bookbinding
This week…This Week? Yes, I have been a bit lax in my updating your podcast. My excuses range for personal and private to laziness with laziness taking the cake.
However, We’re Back! And hopeful.
In the last four or five or six months I have made and sold a few yearly schedules, a music book, and repaired a music book. I also gave away a yearly schedule that starts in September and ends in March. Strange, but true.
Fiction
In Fiction I’ve written several short stories that are actually flash fiction plus a bunch of one-sentence stories; very different from novels.
Just before November I began a novel. I finished it shortly after November but I don’t consider it a NaNoWriMo novel. It’s called The New Crucifixions. The leaders of different groups are assassinated by members of those groups because the groups want martyrs.
One thing I knew would happen when I read Molly Bright to you in the last podcast all those months ago (May?) is that I would discover misspelled words, mistaken words, less-than-ideal sections, and phrases, and sentences that didn’t play well with others. And, of course, I did.
Some I corrected before I recorded, some I edited out, and some I let stand during the recording but let stand in the final product but edited in the written record.
Does that mean I’m going to inflict the entire novel on you in aural form? No.
However…
An Audio Book
You do have the opportunity to listen to my novel Calvado: A Deadly Love Story. It’s about Calvado and Mack, two people in New York City whose lives interconnect in a strangely time-bending way; one ends up dead. Meanwhile, a crow chases a pimp from Brazil to New York. The pimp believes the crow is the reincarnation of a sex worker he beat to death. The pimp befriends Mack.
You can find the first chapter up now by clicking here or by going to iTunes (or whatever Apple is calling their podcast/music service these days.) Or by clicking on the Audio Book of Calvado: A Deadly Love Story on your left-hand column.
https://calvadoaudio.podbean.com.
Sunday May 16, 2021
Sunday May 16, 2021
Bookbinder of the Week:
Asao Shimura is a papermaker who studied industrial chemistry in university, but then went on to become a papermaker while studying in the US, Korea, China, Japan, and a host of other countries. He lives in the Philippines and teaches papermaking all over the world, including the US. Active on Facebook, his posts are in English.
Bookbinding
This week I completed four books; two experimental and two for sale. Except one has already been sold.
It’s a 2021 Schedule (April to April) that was requested last year but only completed this week because of family concerns. It has a two yearly calendars (2021 and 2022), 13 monthly calendars, and a bunch of weekly calendars. The total is 100 pages including five graph pages for planning and doodling.
The other one for sale but not yet sold is a red blank notebook of 100 pages, 105mm x 145mm, and a soft cover (i.e. no book board). Suitable for planning novels, parties, films or doodling.
The two experimental ones were various page lengths of leftover papers (about 120 pages), leftover decorative pieces (a subway token and a car tax certificate for last year), and scraps of paper for the cover. This one is A5 in size.
One cover was a true experiment in that I pasted together half a dozen small papers then cut them in a decorative way hoping the ridges and valleys would create an amusing cover. I failed. Or, rather, I succeeded in discovering one method that didn’t work. This one is 85 mm x 135 mm, and fits nicely in my hand.
The purpose of these two experimental books was to push my comfort zone further into the void that is my lack of knowledge about bookbinding, books, and glue.
Fiction
I continued working on Molly Bright the novel and Molly Bright the character (Chapter Two doing the in-depth introduction) in 10 pages; the same as the Introductory Chapter that introduces The Plot! I’ve succeeded in making her deeper while at the same time making the character she’s talking to (a Japanese-English interpreter/guide) deeper as well. I even included some foreshadowing.
I worked a bit on the third character who is introduced in the third chapter, Early Mather, who is still penniless and homeless in India but wishing to get to Japan. Being optimistic about his situation he is sure some day he will surf in Japan. But being realistic he is saving as much as he can from his begging income, which is meager.
Molly and Early will, as shown in the first chapter, meet in a surfing site along with Sawako Kado, who gets kidnapped – also in the first chapter – by a cult that wishes to use her computer expertise and chemical talent to fashion a dirty bomb or computer virus.
Tuesday May 04, 2021
Tuesday May 04, 2021
Bookbinder of the Week: Nao Inoue
Inoue Nao is a bookbinder and teacher in Tokyo. She won a prize in an Italian bookbinding competition, has displayed her books in a variety of galleries, and has some innovative book covers.
She teaches all aspects of bookbinding from making your own book cloth to working with leather and making miniature books. She teaches in both English and Japanese and her website is in English, Chinese, and Japanese. I have taken her classes and learned quite a bit.
Ms Inoue’s website with classes and store: Marumizu.net
Bookbinding
This week I made six A6-sized (pocketbook) books using scraps, recycling bits and pieces of endpapers, text blocks, and covers. Why? To become more comfortable with the groove between the spine and the covers, something I have always struggled with. Success! I am now more comfortable with the groove.
And to see how long it takes me to make a book. Three and a half hours is my average speed for an A6-sized book with between five and nine signatures.
Yes, there are only five books in the picture. I finished the sixth one just before I made this blog post and its accompanying podcast.
I also made a small book 90 mm x 90 mm with, maybe 9 signatures, and a very ’Japanese-y’ cover. For those born and educated in the US, 90 mm is about 3 and a half inches (3.5, if you understand decimals) or about palm-width.
This one took about 3.5 hours as well, but it included that stripe on the front to indicate that that is the front. The other books have no such marker. Again, the text block is recycled from class handouts.
Fiction
I wrote a bit more on Molly Bright this time on Molly Bright. Chapter One is mainly about the second main character and the character who gets the story rolling: Sawako Kado, a genius computer wiz being sought after by a murderous religious cult. This chapter’s up to eleven pages and is mostly complete.
Chapter Three is about the third main character: Early Mathers, a easy-going, lazy, travel-addicted 30-something who gets caught up in Sawako’s dilemma. This one’s only got two pages and is far from complete.
But Chapter Two is about the main character: Molly. Molly is on a business trip in Fukuoka and Kagoshima in Japan when she runs into Sawako and Early. The people she meets and the trials and terrors she must go through change her from a career-minded, fast-track executive of the import business she works for into a more relaxed artisan with a talent for marketing.
Saturday Apr 24, 2021
Saturday Apr 24, 2021
Bookbinder of the Week
Akai Miyako is a miniature bookbinder in that she makes miniature books not that she’s a tiny bookbinder. Her miniatures have won awards in Japan and deservedly so as they are exquisite.
She is also a writer who has won prizes in Japan. She also produced her own small magazine in 2002. One of her prizes is for writing a 1000 character novel – This doesn’t mean there are 1000 characters in her novel (surpassing even Tolstoy for speaking parts in novels) but the characters are the equivalent of words. She wrote a 1000-word flash fiction and won a prize for it.
She is on Facebook and has a web presence in English & Japanese at Kototsubo.com
Bookbinding
I’ve been asked to make a schedule for 2021. The customer wants the schedule to start and end in April (I have to hurry), and have no yearly calendar, but 13 monthly calendars, and a weekly calendar. I am also waiting for the client to tell me what color paper I should use for the weekly calendar.
Also, the client asked for an orange cover. I sent jpegs of five different book cloths that could be considered orange. I included a sixth jpeg of one I thought was too yellow but it had a touch of orange. The client took that one.
Fiction
Two things. First, in the last few months I finished reading Melville’s Moby Dick and Cervantes’ Don Quixote. I am now several chapters into Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. In comparison to the story-within a-story structure and ramblings of Don Quixote and the minutia and dry biological/humanistism of Moby Dick, Anna Karenina is a relaxing pleasure to read. I think in part this is because you can read ten pages of Tolstoy, stop, and pick it up and know where you are and who is in the scene. With both Melville and Cervantes you might find yourself in a completely different world.
But this is about reading and not writing.
Second, in writing (and influenced by my reading of Anna Karenina) I have written a few pages of my so-called long novel, Molly Bright, but no, Molly Bright is nothing — Absolutely Nothing — like Tolstoy’s masterpiece. But reading Tolstoy has given me the permission to include character insights, my own observations about people, and interior monologs that I most often keep to a minimum or avoid all together.
Plus, while technically Molly is a thriller, it can be read in smaller chunks. Chapter One, for example, is ten pages. It looks like Chapter Two is going to fall within that landscape as well. I’m also writing Chapter Three and in my head that seems to clock in a bit longer. The three chapters introduce the three main characters and the intrigue and action.
I’m also looking for a better cover.
Thursday Apr 01, 2021
Thursday Apr 01, 2021
Bookbinder of the Week:
Don Etherington is a British bookbinder and conservator who did an apprenticeship and journeyman work in England, waded through the floods of Venice in 1966 to rescue old manuscripts and books, has created conservation programs in Texas and North Carolina, influenced both Bookbinders and Conservators on at least two continents, and has influenced the fields of bookbinding and conservation. Here is his website: Etherington
Bookbinding
Busy week.
• The 1/2 Accordion. And the Video
I started (and badly) an accordion book. I made a video of it and plastered it on YouTube for your viewing pleasure here. I started two more for the practice.
• I have four A6-sized blank notebooks to give away.
Last last week I made two softcover A6-size blank notebooks with page numbers using thick orange paper as covers. Previously I made two softcover A6-size blank notebooks without page numbers using purple book cloth as covers. For those who reside in the inch bubble A6 is about 4" x 6".
Yours for free!
Send me an email!
Put “Blank Notebook” in the subject line.
Request color (Orange or Purple).
One Notebook per customer; but First Come, First Serve.
If the Notebook you requested is already gone, sorry.
My only request is If you get a notebook and use it, tell me how it holds up.
Fiction
I finished Growing Slurry. Yeah! The last three chapters were written Simultaneously! Why? When I got stuck in one chapter, I slipped into another chapter. When I ran into a road block there, I escaped into another chapter. Eventually, by sitting and typing until I was finished, I finished! Yeah!
Now, the editing and rearranging begins.
The ending is less than conventional on the one hand but is sort of conventional on the other. It ends. With a question. And it is neither happy nor sad. On the other hand, it leads nicely into a sequel, except this isn’t a movie; it’s a book.
Next week, perhaps I shall give you more information — A Plot Summary‽ Perhaps? — about this novel including Including! The current title.
Saturday Mar 20, 2021
Saturday Mar 20, 2021
Bookbinder of the Week:
Adela Yustas Romo is a Spanish paper artist/marbler available on Facebook and, perhaps Pinterst. She is creative, has an interest in Japanese design such as suminagashi, Turkish/Cnetral Asian erbu and creates a wide variety of paper suitable for either covers, endpapers, or decorative designs.
Bookbinding
This week I made another small sketch book. A6 (105x150 mm or 4" x 6" for our American brethren) in size with 64 pages or four signatures of four folios each.
The cover is made of thick paper which matches the fake headbands in color. I placed a bit of scrap construction paper to indicate the front and trimmed everything off nicely.
I also made a video of me making it here: Compendium Sketch Book.
Fiction
Last week I worked – again – on Growing Slurry but I did not finish it as I had hoped. Primarily because I didn’t put my butt on the chair and do it; I got distracted by ill relatives. Yes, plural. Another one was rushed to the hospital with a serious non-coved 19 problem. They may be out of the woods, but no one is certain.
But I worked on both the final chapter and what looks to be working out to be the penultimate chapter. I will not promise to finish it these week but I will allow as how when I do finish it, my faithful audience will be given a chance to read it.
Coming Soon! (I hope): Growing Slurry!
Plot & Characters
Two people meet in a coffee shop but neither of them are as they appear. Sliven, dressed as a homeless creature, helps people in trouble. Gina, for all outward appearances seems to be a company employee has a hidden past frought with violence and survival.
During the course of an afternoon, they talk. They remember. They let us know more about their past.
Video of the Making of Compendium of Outlines & Art, a sketch book.
Saturday Mar 13, 2021
Saturday Mar 13, 2021
Bookbinder of the Week:
Buzz Spector
Former Washington University (St Louis MO in the US) professor Señor Spector is less a bookbinder and more of a book sculptor/manipulator/artist who uses books as his medium much like painters use paint and potters use clay. He’s had exhibitions world-wide and has two books you can check out if you find his art alluring: Buzzwords and The Book Maker’s Desire.
Bookbinding
This week I finished my cellphone-size schedule (finally) and shipped it off to the customer. It looks good, I think, and is definitely capable of being put in a suit pocket (the one requirement).
Secondly, I made a sketch book for an artist who wanted a small book he could carry around. This one has a soft cover that is easily folded so he can fold it back and draw (mostly portraits of people he sees in the street). It is 64 pages, A6 (4" x 6") in size, with a portion of a map of the artist’s city as endpapers, and a nifty title:
Book of Thoughts & Memorabilia.
(with a pay phone booth in the background for the memorabilia)
Fiction
I wrote the final chapter of Growing Slurry. However, the book is not finished. I must get from where I am now, stranded in Chapter 13, to Chapter 15 which is the final chapter. The subtitle has been changed from the very generic ‘A Love Story’ to the more accurate ‘An Accountable Love Story’ as the male main character (Sliven) is a forensic accountant and the female main character brings people to account for their transgressions.
When I eventually finish this novel I promise to make a special edition available to my listeners.