Well, dear readers, I must write these here notes in a hurr for she of the Evil Eye will be here all too soon. You see what I did there? I was in such a fershluganah hurry that I left the “y” off. I hate when that happens. In any case, I must fly through the notes because I must be up bright and early. I will say that I had a delightfully delightful day yesterday. I got up, answered e-mails, did some errands and whatnot, paid a few bills, and then had a lunch meeting at the Hamburger Hamlet. It was one of the few times there where the service was really not up to snuff, so I said something to the manager and the next thing I knew is we had a big piece of chocolate fudge cake on the table, gratis. That was very nice. After lunch, I had more errands and whatnot to do, and then I picked up a few packages and came home. I listened to music whilst answering more e-mails and having a few telephonic calls. Finally, it was time to mosey on over to Mr. Grant Geissman’s home environment for our book designing session. I cannot tell you the enormous pleasure one gets from seeing one’s big fat unwieldy and ugly-looking manuscript suddenly start to look like an actual book. Mr. Geissman, who has designed heaven knows how many books, is quite expert at this. And within ninety minutes the book was looking like a book. We made some aesthetic decisions and then began fixing some spacing problems that always occur when going from a Word document to the book design program. And whilst we were going through and catching those and doing a global to try to make all my hyphens that are meant to be em dashes into actual em dashes, we realized it had caught only about two percent of them. And as we went through the pages we realized that I had hundreds upon hundreds of the damned things. I usually am the king of the em dash, but I really thought I cut back in this book. Sadly, that isn’t the case. So, Grant began changing them to other things – commas, periods, semi-colons, and colons, leaving only a handful as actual em dashes. I do so many because I’m just used to it, but they do get ridiculous after a while. But that was taking so much time that he just went ahead and did all the spacing fixes and some other formatting things so that the entire book was in proper form. I’ll now be proofing that and will circle each em dash that we haven’t done (still in the hundreds) and in our next session we’ll fix and change most of them. I’m hoping the next session happens in the next few days. The big job at that session will be creating the sixteen pages of photographs (two eight-page sections), and we’ll enter all the bad-break fixes that I catch, as well as all the em dash things. And from here on in, I shall no longer be the king of the em dash. While I may use them while I’m first writing, I’ll then systematically go through and change them to other things. I must say, this book looks really wonderful and it will be so much fun to add the photographs – with the latter, the book will run about 416 pages.
After our session, Grant and I went to the Hamlet and we split some chicken strip appetizers and some nachos. It was just right.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I must toddle off to the bedroom environment to get my beauty sleep.
Today, I’ll be printing out the formatted book and proofing it until I finish, so that I’m prepared for our next session. I also have to read through the latest draft of the long musical, but I can skip from fix to fix just to make sure they’ve all been made, so that shouldn’t take too too long. And then I’ll probably eat a light meal and watch a motion picture or three.
Tomorrow, Cason will be here and we’ll be addressing packages and affixing postage on same. I then must write the liner notes for our new release, and then give a final listen to our new master so that can go off to the pressing plant.
This week will be very busy. My plan is to hopefully get the book to the publisher by the end of next weekend. I have several meetings, and then I’ll be doing a book signing at the yearly paperback book show a week from tomorrow.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, print out the formatted book, proof until I finish, check out the latest draft of the new musical, eat, and then relax. Today’s topic of discussion: Of all the coffee table books you’ve ever seen, which was the most beautiful and breathtaking – the one with the most incredible design and contents? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I endeavor to not be king of the em dash ever again.