Hey, munchkins. So,…

Hey, munchkins. So, work is proceeding apace on the cookbook -- I have test cooks going strong, and I only have a few more sections to complete. I'm hoping Lethe can do a Christmas release -- Steve should get back to me shortly with dates, and then I'll know how much time I'll have to refine recipes, clarify, etc. One cook requested metric measurements be included for each recipe -- I can see how that would make it a lot easier for a lot of people, but I'm honestly not sure there's room; it was designed to be a little book, and if the lines get too long, it becomes problematic. Not to mention that it would be kind of a pain to do. I suppose there's probably some metric converter somewhere on the web, so I could just feed each measurement in and get out the equivalent. But oh, tedious.

Kevin's party went well -- made lots of Sri Lankan food to feed the math people. :-) Got to retest some of the recipes, yay! Some of these I haven't made in a long time -- and there's still a few of them that I just have as recipes from my mom, that I haven't made at all. Need to do that soon.

There's other work going on -- the SH manuscript is revised and done, I think. Just waiting on Zak to send in the planet image (Zak, if you want, just post the url here in comments -- I can't imagine any of the journal readers will bother going there), and for Steve to tell me if they'll be doing layout or if they want me to. I'm not sure whether to ask them to lay the book out in Verdana, which is what we use for the site -- Jed, will that look good in print?

Lots of book-stuff in my head! :-) We've got cascading release dates too (sort of like cascading action scenes, but possibly better), with the SH book aiming for World Fantasy at the end of October, the cookbook aiming for a Christmas release, and my Silence and the Word aiming for Valentine's Day, I think. Fun!

Other than that, it's mostly been lounging around here, cleaning up from the party, catching up on tv, trying to recover from a cold we both picked up somehow, and re-reading Octavia Butler, in preparation for trying to draft that colonization story. Jed and I spent a few hours discussing the collab on Sunday; one of us should start drafting soon. There's an odd pressure to getting the start of this one right -- more so than with a regular story, since the collaborator will be trying to follow your lead. Weirdness.

Lastly, I must I must write a dang editorial for SH, covering all kinds of stuff. This last weekend was crazy with guests and party planning, but it's coming out this coming Monday for sure. So say I.

5 thoughts on “Hey, munchkins. So,…”

  1. I think Verdana was designed for screen viewing. At any rate, it’s a lovely font, but it’s also a sans-serif font, and common wisdom has it that body text in printed material should use a serif font. Sans-serif fonts tend to be used for headings and advertising and other “display” purposes. You won’t find many professionally published books that use sans-serif fonts for body text; I’m guessing most of those that do are little cute gift books with not much text per page.

    So I’d go for Palatino or New Century Schoolbook or some other unobtrusive common serif font. Steve can probably recommend one. I’d be inclined to avoid Times Roman, but that’s just a personal preference. If you do end up with Times, consider using a slightly larger-than-normal size (12-point Times can be pretty small), and/or using slightly larger-than-normal “leading” (the amount of vertical space between lines of text).

  2. Would adding a metric conversion page to the book somewhere be enough to help your test cook ? Cookbooks tend to use a small subset of measurements that would easily fit on one page. I also agree with the comments on using serif font. I just spent a couple of days reading a document that used a sans-serif font that looked fine on the screen but made reading difficult on the printed page.

  3. I just don’t know if it’s worth it, Scott. When I use a metric cookbook, I look up the conversions in my Fannie Farmer cookbook, which has comprehensive conversion tables. I don’t know if it makes sense for every cookbook to spend pages on those…pages cost money, after all.

  4. If you are looking for a converter, you can use Google. Just type in the conversion, like ‘5 cups in ml’ and it gives the conversion.

    You are putting an introduction in you cookbook, right? Just put a few words in about marking up the book and making it their own, including convering measurements to what they’re comfortable with. That’s what we do with ours, along with little notes like ‘This one’s good’ or ‘double the pepper’ or ‘Serves 4’ where it said it serves 6-8.

    I’m looking forward to it.

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