Nice dinner with Sharmi and David, followed by a Scrabble game in which David cruelly denied me the right to play the word "quailers" (as in, "You quailer!", meaning 'one who has quailed mightily, a phrase that was in common use around the U of C math department when I was a wee college lass). But righteousness triumphed in the end, as "squalor" placed on a triple-word squashed him quite thoroughly. Huzzah!
Today I'm going to go up to Berkeley in the hopes of actually writing for a change. I'm planning on going directly to Cafe Elodie (do not pass go, do not collect $200), for lunch and tea and working on the novel. I'll be there from about 10:30 - 3-ish (hey, Dan -- want to have lunch?), and then back to David's. Dinner tonight with Debbie, I think, though I should've confirmed that earlier. Fingers crossed, at any rate.
Have you guys seen the Cafe Press POD thing? Now I'm severely tempted to go make a little book. Would you prefer:
a) a copy of Season of Marriage
b) a copy of Minal in Winter
c) a copy of Esthely Blue
d) a selected set of my love poems
e) a copy of The Poet's Journey
f) a copy of The Poet and the Mathematician
g) a set of Sri Lankan recipes
I might do them all eventually, but y'all can vote on which I do first. :-) All the stories are available on my stories page, of course.
Hmm...I'm going to need a color cover if I do this. Oh, Zak? You there, Zak?
I haven’t seen the Cafe Press POD thing and so have no idea what it is, but I won’t let that stop me from putting in a vote for “The Poet’s Journey”, because it’s my favorite.
The Cafe Press POD is “Print on Demand” – they are now offering to print books on demand for a fixed price based on the number of pages, size and binding type. They handle the payments and shipping and like anything else which CafePress offers, you can set up a shop for free and set up the prices yourself (marked up from their charges).
Initially they seem to have just staple and wire binding options, with perfect bound (think paperback books) binding coming soon, but possibly not initially available).
The costs are not really low, certainly higher than the per-book cost of a regular printer, but the prices are much lower than doing it yourself at Kinkos, and in unlike a printer or Kinkos, you don’t have to build up an inventory (with the related investment) – in fact, all it takes is the time to set up the shop and there are no other costs.
Recipes!!! Recipes!!!
choice f or g
I am indeed here. Before I could do a color cover, I’d need to know which one of the group it was to be — but I’m certainly game to do it!
Well, Zak, we don’t appear to have consensus yet, I’m afraid. My readers are either uninterested or insufficiently responsive. Though maybe that’s just the weekend. 🙂
I was actually thinking I might do some sort of combination deal. Something like one of the Sri Lankan stories (probably “Season of Marriage”) along with a bunch of recipes. And then in another book, the two Poet pieces. I know you already did a sketch for the Poet’s Journey, which we could use for a cover, but I was actually thinking I might ask Kat Byer (the Coffee People lady) if she’d be interested in doing the cover for that one; her style is very suited to a children’s book-type thing, I think. And I’m thinking yours might be more suited to doing a lush South Asian adult woman, as per “Season”. Some sort of collage-ish piece, maybe, with spices? We might also be able to use one of the images from the CD’s for the back cover? What do you think?
That sounds fabulous! I keep dabbling with different styles, but I just haven’t been able to feel at home doing anything but photorealism. I’ve been kind of itching to do something collage-y anyhow, so that’ll be exactly perfect!
What a set of choices, I love Esthely Blue, but I have that on CD, so I’ll put in my vote for the love poems…(I’ve always been such a sucker for your poetry) ;=)
Hey, Zak. I’ve been thinking about all this some more, and I actually think your collage-ish style would be perfect for “Esthely Blue”. Have you read that story? There’s a bit out in the woods that I’d love to have illustrated… Another great graphic might be the opening of the story, where she’s looking down at her feet. If that sounds like fun to you, why don’t you go ahead and get started; I’ll try to do the book layout in the next few days, so I can upload it before I go to Europe. Might not be possible, but worth a shot. 🙂 I’m just not sure whether to combine that one with something else — the saddle-stitch format is 52 pages, I think, so I can either use a biggish font (or lots of white space), or I can fit in something else — another story or some poems or some such. Hmmm…
Will ask Kat about doing Poet books too.
Still thinking about doing recipes and love poems, but need to think about suitable illos for each. I’m reconsidering putting “Season of Marriage” in with the recipes — it’s somewhat apropos, but not as much as “Monsoon Day”, which is still unpublished elsewhere (and which I have hopes for publishing). So I might hold off on that. The love poems, I just want to find a suitable art style, one that’s different from both Zak and Kat’s styles. Probably not with illustration, actually — I’m thinking more something old-fashioned, like old type muted in the background, or diagrams of the heart or a combination thereof. Anyone know of any good clip-art archives for public-domain old anatomical sketches? Or other old art (the kind Lady Churchill’s uses, and hey, maybe I should ask Gavin this question…)?
I have a sudden desire to combine “Esthely Blue” with “Silence and the Word” — maybe because they’re both so autobiographical? Bad idea?
Oh, so many possible books!