Ep. 344: Will She Like It?

Ep. 349 五つ目綴じ A Japanese Binding & Locale

Bookbinding Mostly in Japanese bookbinding we have four sewing stations (holes), but it is possible and popular to have more. I made a five-hole book which, in Japanese, is called 五つ目綴じ (itsutsu-me-toji). The itsutsu (五つ) means five, me (目) means hole, and toji means binding or stitching.  Two things about Japanese bookbinding: 1. The thread might go through a sewing station three times, so make the hole large enough to accommodate that. 2. Keep the thread tight. A loose thread looks really bad on a Japanese binding. I chose a Japanese binding for this book because the action takes place in a Japanese city; Kanazawa, as a matter of fact. A famous author dies and comes to Kanazawa to learn about life. Very much character driven. It’s called The Dead of Winter; a Novelist’s Kanazawa Afterlife. Fiction I’ve been slack in the fiction writing side of my life. I’m working on three books, slowly. 1. The Posthumous Autobiography of the Widow Agnes Grout, Death Weaver, 2. Dmitry the Scavenger, 3. The Barcelona Bank Fraud Case. The first is a character-driven story of a woman who lives about 200 years. The second is about a Russian scavenger who wants to go to Sicily to avoid life in Russia. The third is a Marsh Mystery starring Joe and Carmen, private investigators in Spain. Talkies / Flicks  TDGB 92: 五つ目綴じ [https://youtu.be/Ln6C-GZnD3Q] is about book I mentioned in the Bookbinding section of this blog. At 9:40, it’s short enough to watch during your morning coffee. Isn’t it? I tell you in more detail what I’m doing to make a washi cover for a book; make it thicker and less flexible in order to carry the book.  Books If you like audio books, I have one on Apple Books called The Merchant of Venus. The subtitle is: When females are made to order, Marshall is an artist. In reality, in the book, females are made with a combination of herbs, spices, and male body parts; usually fingers. Marshall, the main character, ends up with only seven fingers. He falls in love too easily sometimes.   Apple [PASTE_YOUR_SPECIFIC_BOOK_URL_HERE] Barnes & Noble [PASTE_YOUR_SPECIFIC_BOOK_URL_HERE] Kobo [PASTE_YOUR_SPECIFIC_BOOK_URL_HERE]

Ep. 348 Has June 22 Come and Gone, Again?

Bookbinding This week I made another coptic-bound, B6, 100-ish-page notebook. The right page has lines for writing while the left page is blank for drawings, doodles, and shading exercises.  As you can see, the cover is both purplish-grey and red book cloth with the purplish-grey the same book cloth as my June 5th notebook. The point of this notebook, like the other previous similar notebook, is to encourage me to do three things: • practice drawing (which my fifth grade teacher told my parents I was bad at and just drew the same thing over and over, which she didn’t realize was practice), • practice cursive (which I know I’m bad at which is why I’m practicing it), and • plot out both daily schedules and long term plans. So far, so good. And to practice making B6 coptic-bound notebooks; a good investment for someone who claims to be a bookbinder; not me, though, I don’t claim to be a bookbinder except in front of people who don’t know what a bookbinder is or does. i.e. many people. In my opinion, June 5 is the better notebook as the stitching is tighter than June 22. But June 22’s stitching is much better than previous attempts in the past few years, so, yeah! Fiction This blog and my YouTube channel are inspiring me to be more productive. Before I can show you what I’ve done in bookbinding, I have to have done some bookbinding. Similarly, in order to tell you what I’ve written, I have to have written something. On my desk, I have three books in progress even if you don’t count Caraculiambo which has been in progress for a mere ten years. The three works in progress are: • Dmitry the Scavenger • The Madrid Mariposa Murder Mystery • The Posthumous Autobiography of the Widow Agnes Grout, Death Weaver The first two are basically action-driven novels. Dmitry is longer-form and deals with social issues both in Russia and Japan. Madrid is a shorter one, coming in at maybe 60 pages. The last one, Agnes Grout, started maybe seven years ago, is longer and more character-driven. Agnes is progressing nicely; much research is required, though, as it takes place in the US over a period of 200 years. Talkies / Flicks TDGB 91 The June 22 Notebook [https://youtu.be/L_xSLmUrahA] is up for your viewing pleasure. The narration is not necessarily connected to the visual; it’s more about Why create rather than How to create. Plus this week’s narration is more off-the-cuff than seriously related to the visuals. I hope you enjoy it. In the not-too-distant future, I will, hopefully, put up an audio book on YouTube of The Dead of Winter: A Novelist’s Kanazawa Afterlife.  Books I have several novels up for your reading pleasure. Both action-oriented mystery thrillers (Marsh Mysteries) and more character-driven stories such as The Merchant of Venus (both ebook and audio-book) and The Lonely Izakaya Down a Quiet Street. Apple [PASTE_YOUR_SPECIFIC_BOOK_URL_HERE] Barnes & Noble [PASTE_YOUR_SPECIFIC_BOOK_URL_HERE] Kobo [PASTE_YOUR_SPECIFIC_BOOK_URL_HERE]

Ep. 347 In June, is it the Dead of Winter?

Bookbinding In bookbinding this week we have, for your visual pleasure, a novel. We have an A6-size, about 60-page, case bound edition of The Dead of Winter: A Novelist’s Kanazawa Afterlife. Printed, folded, sewed, and cased in fairly quickly (for me) in a day or two. Most of the time was attempting to align the title on the cover and spine. Properly. I think I succeeded in that endeavor. Case bound in red book cloth with the titles in black and photographed in front of a coffee shop.  Fiction In fiction, I’ll talk about the book bound in Bookbinding: The Dead of Winter. The premise: The Novelist, a famous unnamed novelist, dies and moves to Kanazawa where he’s tutored by Judy, the female owner of a coffee shop, on how to write about females. The Dead of Winter is a very character-driven plot with most of the action in a coffee shop near Kenrokuen, a famous and massive garden here in Kanazawa. Judy tells The Novelist he doesn’t write female characters very well. Judy’s vivid, vibrant personality sits in juxtaposition to The Novelist’s female characters, which Judy calls ‘cardboard characters with boobs’. It turns out this version, which I gave to a reader, is the first draft. After giving it to the interested person, I re-read it and found several – I mean Several – things I wanted to change. Not merely typos but entire scenes that neither moved the plot nor developed the characters. These were cut. Some were replaced but others were ignored entirely. But this is what writers should do: re-write. This resulted in the second draft. I started recording an audio version. As I read I found awkward, illogical leaps, and confusing wordage. I changed them, rearranged them, or rewrote them. I found longwinded passages that were reduced in scope but increased in effectiveness. Again, this is what writers should do. This, then, resulted in the third draft. Talkies / Flicks You can watch the creation of The Dead of Winter [https://youtu.be/u5bn9FKbCQ4]on my YouTube channel if you’d like. It’s 9:40-ish and includes some talk about writing fiction. Missing from this visual documentation is the time spent aligning titles on the front cover and spine as that would require too much time and is basically me sitting at my computer and slapping my printer when it fails to function properly, which is often. I’m hoping in the future to have an audio book of The Dead of Winter. Watch this space. Books I have several books from sale on Apple, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo which you might like. For starters you can choose: • The Lonely Izakaya Down a Quiet Street [https://books2read.com/u/bO5NVK] • The Merchant of Venus (ebook [http://books2read.com/u/bP5eoj] & audio [https://books.apple.com/jp/audiobook/the-merchant-of-venus/id6777468294?l=en-US]) • The Madrid Mariposa Murder Mystery [https://books2read.com/u/mgX0B0] The audio book of The Merchant of Venus is only available on Apple Books. Take a listen to the sample. Apple [PASTE_YOUR_SPECIFIC_BOOK_URL_HERE] Barnes & Noble [https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/x/x?ean=2940183148237] Kobo [https://www.kobo.com/search?query=9798233530197]

Ep. 346 What Happened June 5th?

Bookbinding I made a B6-size, Coptic-bound, mostly blank, 120-page, seven-signature notebook for my visual pleasure. Meaning, I made this notebook for myself to use as a notebook, a depository for my doodles, ideas, plans, and to expand my horizons. One horizon I wish to improve on is cursive writing. People my age were taught cursive in school, maybe elementary school. This has fallen by the wayside in the last 50 years. I want to improve mine. Plus, I want to practice drawing; mostly people but also landscapes, cityscapes (i.e. a building), and something from my imagination. I realize this will take time. Years. I’m not impatient. Anymore.  To distinguish between the front and back of the book, I added a strip of leftover red book cloth from previous books (i.e.. The Lonely Izakaya Down a Quiet Street and Madrid Mariposa Murder Mystery)  Fiction The fiction today leans mostly toward The Dead of Winter A Novelist’s Kanazawa Afterlife. I saw the main female character, Judy, in a different light. Rather than be a café shop owner, she is now a more philosophical image; one that the main male character will learn from. Fortunately, the novel is only 20 pages long so I can go back and fix Judy easily. Hopefully, this will propel me further into the development of both characters and spur me into finishing the novel quickly. Or quicker than before. Dmitry the Scavenger has been placed on the back burner for a moment but it has an advantage. While The Dead of Winter is character-driven, Dmitry is plot and action driven. This makes Dmitry a little bit easier to write. Talkies / Flicks / Movies / Videos Race on over to my YouTube channel [https://studio.youtube.com/video/A5P2j27UqFY/edit] to see the latest upload for your audio, visual, and educational pleasure. I think you can learn a little bit about coptic binding. If you’ve never seen it before. Or have never folded a piece of paper. Plus nice music! Books First, The Madrid Mariposa Murder Mystery is available on Apple, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble if you enjoy what used to be called hard-boiled detective novels. This one is less hard-boiled and more aware of his surroundings. body text about books goes here. It is part of my Marsh Mystery series. Carmen and Joe live in Madrid with her brother. One of his employees kills someone. And with her brother’s pistol. These leads to more complications than in the US.  Joe and Carmen investigate why the employee kill the person and discover something odd.  Second, years ago I published a novella called The Merchant of Venus [https://books.apple.com/jp/book/the-merchant-of-venus/id1425898917?l=en-US]. (Available on Apple Books.) However, I’m here to tell you that an audio book version is also available on Apple Books [https://books.apple.com/jp/audiobook/the-merchant-of-venus/id6777468294?l=en-US].  The Merchant of Venus takes place in another universe; one where females are born as an adult from a body part of a male. The people who make females require a man’s body part, some herbs, and time.  The Merchant of Venus: In a World where Men make Women and the Woman has a set Life Limit, Marshall is an Artist. The audio version on Apple Books was recorded using AI. This is a requirement of Apple Books. You can listen to a free sample before deciding to purchase it or not; please check it out and tell me what you think of the AI voice.  Apple [PASTE_YOUR_SPECIFIC_BOOK_URL_HERE] Barnes & Noble [https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/x/x?ean=2940183148237] Kobo [https://www.kobo.com/search?query=9798233530197]

Ep. 345 What is Mariposa?

Bookbinding In bookbinding this week we have, an A6-sized, 45-ish page mystery novel completed for a friend who also corrected my Spanish as the mystery takes place in Madrid. This is the second time I made the same book because I totally screwed up the first one; cover was wonky, endpapers didn’t set straight, signatures were loose. I didn’t like it so I remade it.  The first version was B6 in size. This one is better at A6 because at the larger size, there were too few signatures for a case-bound book. At A6, the number of signatures was just right. Also, to indicate which was the front, I added a triangle of red (which was a scrap left over from another book).  Fiction I’m working on two pieces of fiction this week. The first one, Dmitry the Scavenger, is progressing nicely with Dmitry in Odessa having evaded or bribed his way past both Russian and Ukranian military guards. It is more action-plot oriented with, of course, strong characterization of the people involved. After Odessa I have to get him to Japan by ship. It’s about a 40-day trip and I don’t feel like recreating a sea voyage ala Joseph Conrad. Perhaps he can be drugged? For 40 days? Ah, yes, a connection with a Mideast religious leader who disappeared for 40 days and 40 nights. Or a flood. Hmm.   The second is about a famous author who dies but refuses to leave Kanazawa. He befriends a café owner and they hash out life’s little problems, including his writing about women. This one is titled The Dead of Winter with the subtitle of A Novel of a Kanazawa Afterlife. Maybe I should change it to: A Kanazawa Afterlife? or A Novelist’s Kanazawa Afterlife? (without the question marks.) This is definitely character driven. The café owner is a very strong and opinionated woman in her early 20s and the polar opposite of the male author’s descriptions of female characters in his books.  Talkies / Flicks For your audio and visual pleasure, you have an ten-minute flick about the making of the second edition of The Madrid Mariposa Murder Mystery [https://youtu.be/_35IQCJof9Y] just discussed in your Bookbinding section. Also, other videos pertaining to bookbinding are up on my YouTube channel [https://www.youtube.com/@TedorigawaBookmakers]. Please enjoy. Books Available for your reading pleasure (and some Spanish lessons included) is The Madrid Mariposa Murder Mystery. This is book 3 of the Marsh Mysteries. Joe and Carmen investigate another murder. Carmen’s brother, Símon. runs a successful and expensive restaurant. One of his employees is accused of killing her husband. Her defense: he was abusive.   Because Símon’s pistol was used in the killing, he is under investigation, too.  What Carmen and Joe discover saves Símon but his restaurant is tainted; customers dry up. They also throw the police’s case against the employee into a complete freefall. Is she innocent, though? The Madrid Mariposa Murder Mystery is available at these fine online locations. Apple [https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-madrid-mariposa-murder-mystery/id6775096468] Barnes & Noble [https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/x/x?ean=2940183148237] Kobo [https://www.kobo.com/jp/ja/ebook/the-madrid-mariposa-murder-mystery?sId=b076072e-0760-4ad9-8610-ba8ceb5b18e6&ssId=dJkegkeTJuJX4f16vkw8u]