Well, dear readers, I have officially lost my mind. I know there are those out there in the dark who would say that happened long ago and far away, but now it’s quite officially official. I am trying to get the book into a design format to send to the people who’ll finalize, add the headers and proper page numbers and all that stuff. But I want to give them something that’s close, as I did with Preview Harvey. I used Garamond as the font and they sent me the precise spacing between lines. But I found it almost impossible to get it to work right. My spacing that I’d done was a bit too much. In any case, at around nine last evening I decided to try a different font. Normally, most of my books that Grant has done have used a font called Rotis Serif, and it’s clean and nice, but has some weird ways of doing certain things like ampersands. Garamond is also clean. But I also read that Baskerville has been used on many popular books so I tried that one for fun and I found it even cleaner than Garamond and a bit easier to read. So, I did a save as and redid the entire thing in Baskerville 12pt. But it was an endless process because you couldn’t just highlight all the text because the chapter headings are a completely different font and size. So, I had to go chapter by chapter, first changing the text block to Baskerville, then doing the specific spacing they gave me. That worked fine and actually fixed a couple of issues. But it also introduced a couple of new issues. Once I finished, I had to play a bit to get it right and now there are only two pages that they’ll have to futz with. I can’t do anything more because Word is not a design program, it simply doesn’t have the tools. So, once it’s proofed and ready for them, I’ll go through it and make sure I have it as close as I can get it, then they can finesse from there. I just don’t want the chapter headings differently placed from what I have, but basically they can finesse all that spacing to help those two pages that have issues. I just finished all that ten minutes ago, which is why these here notes are going up late. Like really late. So, as they say in Sweet Charity, let me get right to the point.
Yesterday was, well, I don’t know what it was, really. I was up at eleven after six hours of sleep. We solved the postage problem, which was initially a problem on their end, but the helper, rather than calling them, just kept trying to make the charge, probably ten times, which caused them to shut the card down. I finally called, they enabled the card, she had to log out and log in and all was well. And should she ever get that error message again, she’ll know what to do – log out/log in. So, that was good and now we can continue shipping. After that, I answered e-mails and then made tacos. A little of that goes a long way and I won’t be making them again for some time, even though it’s all calorie friendly. Then I did some book stuff, testing other things. That was the day. Then I watched the first hour of The High and the Mighty, a real Preview Harvey moment. Back when it came out in 1954, which is when I saw it multiple times, there hadn’t ever really been a movie like it. Yes, it was a soap opera in the sky but it was thrilling and suspenseful and the characters were colorful and fun. Today, of course, everyone would find it extremely corny but I still love it. I love that the little boy brings a cap gun on the plane, I love that there’s no security, even though had there been it would have stopped another character from bringing a real gun. Of course, there’s lots of smoking, a lot of leering men, but just when it threatens to become too much even for me, we get Gonzales Gonzales, who’s hilarious and wonderful, and we get the Duke being the Duke, and a distressed airplane in trouble. And you get what for me is Dimitri Tiomkin’s greatest score and most memorable theme. I have the DVD, but instead I rented it to stream because it’s HD and it doesn’t look half-bad. And the stereo is great.
Then I went down the book design rabbit hole and that was hours of that and here we are.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll do whatever needs doing, I’ll do a little prep work on Doug’s play, I’ll eat, and then I have a one-hour rehearsal at seven with two of the three cast members – tons of conflicts. Had we cast it the way I suggested, there would have been zero conflicts, but alas, we didn’t. After that, I’ll come home and watch, listen, and relax.
The rest of the week is rehearsals, attending an opening night on Friday, and all that kind of malarkey. And entering the final set of proofing things we find. Oh, and Doug did a little fix on the cover and it’s better. I sent it to Muse Margaret but I don’t think she’s seen it yet.
Well dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up when I’m up, do whatever needs doing, do prep work, eat, have a rehearsal, and watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Ask BK Day, the day in which you get to ask me or any dear reader any old question you like and we get to give any old answer we like. So, let’s have loads of lovely questions and loads of lovely answers and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, hoping all this amateur book design stuff will be helpful.