The new specialist sketches subdomain is coming along, I think. At least I think I've done everything I can do for it at the moment. I was assured that it was all so simple, even I couldn't completely mess it up, and then reassured that I wouldn't have to do too much beyond producing the images and text. So with the thought that after sending that to the powers that be I'd have a pretty looking subdomain up and running in a week or so I sat on my laurels. It sure is nice to have friends who will help out with these sorts of things.
Well that was over a month ago now. I'm getting vague visions of myself pouring over PHP textbooks long into the winter.
It feels like ages since I was doing substantial work, I've not really had too much inspiration for the old creative writing recently. Just idling along and occasionally spending two hours trying to add something, anything, to some old unfinished piece, and then scrapping it almost immediately afterwards. And writing the same work experience (or lack thereof) on application forms is getting really dull. So in order to get in a bit of practice I'm going to try and update this blog a little more often. Probably not as many heavy Critical Theory entries, though I won't count them out. And since this is being typed first instead of hand written, which is what I normally do, I'm getting back into thinking stuff up while looking at a screen again. Hard memories of late nights, early mornings and then late mornings and early afternoons on essay deadline days are coming back already, but no! I shall think of those only as pleasant occasions and persevere!
But yes, happy days and things to type about. I decided to get a wok a few days ago. There allegedly is one somewhere in the house, hidden very well, or perhaps being used as a flowerpot. So, being fed up of cramming the skillet full of noodles every time I wanted a stir fry, a new one was the way to go.
I spent a whole day thinking about what amazing dish would christen the new wok, and eventually decided upon a fairly basic chicken stir fry, with noodles. Probably because it didn't require another shopping trip to get more ingredients since I'd made one the day before getting the wok. I used:
Dished up and ready to eat.
3 chicken breasts,
2 peppers, one green, one red,
1 clove of garlic,
lots of green onions (about 8?),
lots of bean sprouts (though not enough),
noodles,
some Chinese 5-Spice, a dash of coriander, and a packet of Roasted Peanut satay stir fry straight-to-wok sauce.
No Shiitake mushrooms! I ate them all in the last stir fry. Everything got chopped quite small, and the peppers and garlic almost liquified. I'm not a fan of the texture of peppers so I tend to do this a lot, but I always leave the onions quite large and the bean sprouts untouched because I really like their little mild bite. Lightly fried the chicken while the water boiled. Added the regular vegetables but not the bean sprouts while noodles cooked. Put in the seasoning and made sure it tasted good. Chucked the noodles and bean sprouts in and tossed it all around.
I really like having the high walls on the dish because I take a great deal of pleasure from throwing things over in the air, but with a skillet I only ever do that with things like pancakes and eggs since they end up nice and flat and easy to catch. The wok has the sides to throw whatever I want around in it without spilling too much.
I think it tasted really nice, but then again I eat crazy things like Frosties Tacos (future post!). It needed more bean sprouts than I used and possibly slightly smaller (or at least thinner) pieces of chicken. Everyone said it was really good, and all of it got eaten. It was so filling and really good at the end of the day when there was nothing else to do so you could just sit and absorb it.
- Oh, wait.
So this is it. I'm tired of waiting. With helicopters low overhead, the slight tinge of smoke on the air here in London, and more than the usual number of sirens howling past, I feel some kind of purpose. That in pushing this, the work of over thirty individuals over three years, perhaps I have unwittingly found the most appropriate timing. I'm not going to suggest that anybody is furious about not being able to find this in stores, but maybe they should be. It is very, very good.
Yes, sketches, the anthology book of all the little paper issues, I declare thee 'For Sale'. I feel that the pricing is not offensive, and even shipping costs aren't too bad, not if you consider that they'll ship to pretty much anywhere in the world (as far as I know). And how the things are actually being printed and bound between you clicking the 'Buy' button and it falling onto your doorstep.
I am quite new to all this, so things will have to move slowly, but surely. I know what needs to be done. The plans are in place for an exciting subdomain, here, dedicated to sketches, and removed from my insane rantings. I've contacts in certain positions. I'm making the underground movement. Everybody just needs to tell everybody else.
- Only slightly smaller than the standard Penguin size.
About the book itself. What can I say. I'm including a picture of it on my bookshelf for all to see its scale. It isn't a large scale, and not terribly lizard-like. It is quite small, but I wanted it to be as close as possible to Penguin's regular print size, which seems to be the usual size for pretty much all cheaper paperbacks. Ones with slightly thicker covers tend to be at the same size as the current Penguin Classics collection.
So the only book I have that is comparable is an American printing of The Island of Doctor Moreau, what does this imply for sketches? It isn't full of things about vivisection, I swear. But perhaps it is an example of modern literary vivisection, accommodating as it does so many different voices and feelings.
What I will say now is that I want to compile an all new issue as soon as possible, and I'm opening it up to the world. And don't think you can sit on your hands, some people are already clamouring to be included, and I've already got one or two items in the editorial phase. So yes, unsolicited submissions, please. I promise to be understanding.
Hopefully this will all be made more professional within the month...
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/sketches-anthology/16445994
The proof copy of the sketches anthology arrived yesterday. This one is from lulu, and it really is so good to finally have something tangible, even with the irony of immediately uploading an intangible post here about the blasted thing. I must admit to have sent an email with the same hastily taken blackberry picture above about 15 minutes after tearing it from its wrappings, with all the time in between spent pouring over every page. It is a proof after all.
I couldn't find any major faults of my own, and lulu's printing is absolutely top grade. That said, I did have some hassle actually getting the proof. And the time I could have spent idly twiddling my thumbs waiting for their technical support to get back to me I instead employed myself with more research into the whole vanity press issue and alternative options should lulu fall through. So I now have another reformatted version for amazon.com's CreateSpace service.
I have to say both look to be good companies. Certainly more suited to my goals as a writer of very limited means for this project than many of the other vanity press guys out there. lulu.com is very easy to use, but they fall down on a few technical issues. My main problem was with their rendering of my cover on their website and the subsequent download. I spent a good amount of time making a fully vectored tree for the cover, and embedding all the fonts correctly so that everything would appear to be smooth and clean; but when I looked at the preview they offered it all became terribly pixellated and quite ugly. I looked around their support forums and it seemed to be a common problem, with some threads on the same issue having been started way back. I think 2006 was the earliest I saw). But there wasn't really any adequate solution given, apart from wait for the proof and see, and I suppose they haven't redone their infrastructure at any point in the last five years to produce a preview that is up to the author's overwhelmingly high standards. The second problem was found with a voucher code for a free proof copy for myself. Now this was my fault though related to the cover issue, but after pressing the publish button, or whatever it was, I went back to upload a newly saved cover pdf, thinking that I hadn't embedded the fonts correctly on the previous one that had been so mutilated by their preview. So the voucher code was rejected, and I had to wait almost two weeks for their awfully slow technical support to get back to me. They did fix the code and get me my complimentary copy, but not before I had been lured into CreateSpace.
The biggest appeal with CreateSpace is the vast number of zero money options. There's a free ISBN on offer, and I think they automatically put the book on amazon.com, both of which are things that I really want for sketches. That said, they seem to be a touch more expensive, which is to say that they take more of a cut from each book. Which I don't really mind, especially since I don't have to fork out from amazon access or an ISBN. I mean I'm not in this for the profit, otherwise I'd have been a hell of a lot more motivated, and a thousand times more disappointed with the tiny margins employed by the publishing industry. All this is a bit by-the-by for the moment though, since I want to be impressed by their print quality first. Not impressed to the extent of, entering St Peter's in Rome, or viewing the Great Wall of China, impressed, but they have to at least equal lulu's printing.
Watch this space...
Post Script.
I should probably and will probably make a separate post when a decision is actually made (and when I'm less tired, but for now I clicked the little button on lulu to give the Anthology a publicly accessible page. So feel free one and all (all being only one), to make a minor donation with the end result of a beautiful little book shaped package at the end. Shipping in the UK is something like £3, the actual cost is £5. http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/sketches-anthology/10880077