#armoredsuperheavy

The other day I received a package from @armoredsuperheavy​ containing two of my Eagle stories -- Anywhere on This Road and Chosen Man -- bound into actual books and they are amazing! The pictures I have managed to take do not in any way do them justice. They are really, really, lovely.

AotR is the smaller brownish one with some excellent soft velvety bits on the cover and CM is the giant one with the rainbowy marbled cover and the ribbon bookmark. I couldn’t really get a good picture of its frontispiece but it has an illustration of Marcus from what I assume is one of the editions of the actual The Eagle of the Ninth.

So I was inspired by @armoredsuperheavy to start bookbinding, and two weeks later, here we are! First real book!

For anyone interested, I followed Armor’s fantastic guide, and the DAS bookbinding series on how to put together a case bound book (adorably titled “Adventures in Bookbinding”).

@armoredsuperheavy is an absolute artist and this is the most incredibly beautiful thing I’ve ever received.

I dumped a lot of very old personal grief and uncertainty into this story to get it to where it ended up. The characters’ specific struggles aren’t the same as my own, but I tried very hard to focus the narrative on the brand of kindness and understanding that I wish had been shown to me at a younger age. To have it rendered so beautifully in physical format means such an immense amount to me.

STARTED FROM THE BOTTOM NOW WE’RE HERE

My first book in nearly a decade, and first-ever case-binding! This is completely from scratch, and it was such a delight to assemble :D my goal is to bind up fic à la @armoredsuperheavy, so I should get some practice in :) 

Since I haven’t done anything like this in years, I knew I wouldn’t get everything ‘right’ this time, and so I picked something I already wanted to fiddle with and write all over: the scripts to the Chernobyl miniseries, which the author has given us all here! 

I used: 

Adobe InDesign

pros: specifically designed for laying out books, many many options

cons: too many options, confusing. pricey. listen, plain old MS Word does everything you need. when my Adobe suite subscription runs out, I’m not going to be fussed, but it was expensive so I’m gonna use it until the last second. 

20 lb paper

bone folder

thin crochet cord

I’ve got a ball with no identifying marks, but it’s tighter than embroidery thread and can take a good bit of tension

should’ve waxed it

embroidery needle

embroidery needles are designed to push between fibers instead of puncture materials, so I wouldn’t accidentally scratch my pages

linen tape

mid/light weight craft paper as endpapers

green craft paper for the covers

chiffon as ersatz mull 

bookboard

thin, tight-weave fabric + acid-free tracing paper = book cloth experiment

short/wide brush

too much PVA glue!

three dictionaries and an encyclopedia!

steps!

not pictured: typesetting: 

get your PDFs, drop them into your book-family template

.5 margins all around

realise that PDFs don’t import for shit and all the emphasies and things are gone

GROAN

reformat the entire thing to fit your 5.5x8.5 pages! 

I had 14 paragraph styles, and manually put in all the (MORE)s when dialogue crossed pages. Yes, this is a labor of love. 

scripts being scripts, I’m entirely in courier new 

9pt type, 10pt leading, neutral tracking.

math: 

since there will be four pages (of your document) to print per sheet of paper, you want your indesign document to at least be divisible by four. as well though, how many sheets per signature do you want? I recommend six; it folds well in 3s, is thick enough to stand up to thread tension, and is thin enough not to make your book lumpy. So you’re going to want your final document to be divisible by 24. just add some blank pages at the end. 

export .idd as .pdf to save and print through Acrobat:

in the print dialogue, select the ‘booklet’ style, 100% scale

print each signature by printing page range 1-23, 24-47, 48-72, etc

fold and punch holes as per spec: armoredsuperheavy has a masterpost here

I laid a bit of cardboard down over my board so I had something to push through to

I did kludge my way through the sewing frame, though. I’m working on building a proper frame, but so far: 

I taped the linen tapes down, marked where my text block should lie on the board, and kept a block on hand to keep everything at right angles

I also rested my biggest dictionary on the growing block so it couldn’t shift, and paper clip’d each signature to the previous one so that it couldn’t lift up and wander. 

actually, I think this worked fairly well? not perfectly, but darn close. I think the holes not being punched perfectly was actually a bigger issue - it sewed up well enough, they were just misaligned from the get-go!

I also fudged the book press by putting parchment paper between my board, textblock, and the biggest books I could find. 

it did do the job, but I had less control over the glue because everything was at the angle. 

the case! 99% as per the writeup, but also:

cutting bookboard is a pain in the ass, so when one of my pieces came out with an odd angle, I actually just sanded it to match the proper one. perfect time to round the edges, though.

the bookcloth was an experiment! not pictured because I didn’t know what I was doing. it worked, but only so much turned out, so my piece was too small to look nice lmao

suffice to say that other people can manage it, but I’ll be hunting down some iron-on interfacing. 

the writeup doesn’t quite hold our hand through setting in yet, but that really wasn’t complicated. do be careful that it’s in properly, of course, but otherwise, like, pop it in. 

I lettered with bluetape guards and gel pens, again in courier :)

and voilà! that’s a book! for being my first go, it feels quite structurally sound :D I’ve def got aesthetic/technique to brush up on, but I’m so excited to have my own copy of the scripts to annotate!! it’s about 250 pages in 10 signatures, coming to 9x6x.5in of my own new book to be proud of. 

major learning points: 

don’t thin out the glue so much

we’re getting hotter, and the PVA was setting before I could brush it out, so I tried to use a damper brush or what have you so that it wouldn’t just leave exact glue trails

worked, but too well. the spine and endsheets have a bit more texture than you’d like, and the cover paper tore a bit around the corners. 

be more careful about punching holes

even the best frame wouldn’t fix if they’re out of alignment. there’s only about an eighth of an inch of variation, all told, but I can do better.

Hi all! So after being inspired by @armoredsuperheavy to bind fanfiction, my first foray into the craft was with @mtjester‘s Caffeine High!

Your favorite place on the ship is a small wing of the upper deck dining hall called a “coffee shop.”  You don’t really know much about it, actually, except for the little things you hear now and then.  Coffee is a drink from a planet called Earth, as is the alien chained to the counter, who calls itself a “human.”  You only know that much because you overheard it say so to an angry highblood once.

It’s an awesome rare-pare fic for the Homestuck fandom. It was my very first fanfic download from the internet because I never wanted to lose it. After receiving her permission to publish, I made the following two copies (one for me [left] and one for the author [right]):

Thanks to @armoredsuperheavy‘s inspiration, I started preparing to bind some of my favorite fanfics into real books. To do that, as a person not flush with cash, I started comparing prices from both Talas and Hollanders, began making a tutorial for using Affinity Publisher to typeset the fics, and looked around for other cool and helpful resources on how to build my own press, sewing frame, punching cradle and awl guide. I’m working on gathering all of that information into a single document, which I’m sharing here for other underground bookbinders! Currently, it only has the price comparison for resources at Talas and Hollanders, but I will be adding to it and will post here again when I make major updates!

I don't know what to call this specific AU but that's it

Continued from this post (LJ was so perfect for this)

• • • • • • •

"Please."

The whispered plea echoes through Hux's mind once more, and he drowns quickly it with another glass of wine.

Ben had looked so sad, so desperate to be useful. He had looked almost scared, huddled down to the floor in submission as if he thought he might be hurt. He had definitely sounded scared with his voice quivering and cracking every time he looked up.

Hux was tempted in that moment. He must confess that the skin Ben had bared for him was beyond fair, a dreamy sort of pallor that implied naturalness instead of a concerted and unhealthy effort to avoid the sun. And it appeared well cared for, smooth and soft and hairless. He did not touch the boy -- truly an adult in age, but his culture seemed to prize the image of youth as something hallowed, and Hux could hardly see past it -- any more than to lift him from the floor and remove him from his private quarters.

If duty was what brought Ben to him, then Hux would not take him. Ben had acted admirably and with more honor than anyone Hux had ever seen, and to take such cruel advantage of someone so innocent would be so far past sick that Hux would rather remove his own head.

Until Ben learned what it meant to want, Hux would refrain.

Time for Ben to learn, then.

• • • • • • •

"He's unnaturally handsome, isn't he?" Phasma whispers in Ben's ear as she guides him into the large, loud hall. Ben can barely hear her over the festivities.

"Who are talking about?" he asks, puzzled. He looks around at all the men in their military dress. They all look the same.

"Your husband, of course." Her finger leads his eyes to fall upon the Emperor, standing tall and bright at the head of the hall. A fiery heat fills his belly and he pulls himself from Phasma's grip.

"It would behoove you to refrain from speaking about my husband like that," Ben hisses in the coldest tone he can manage, and he leads himself to the Emperor's side.

All through the night, Ben sticks close to his husband's side. He has a rotten feeling about their marriage, that perhaps it wasn't well thought out, that the Emperor has changed his mind, that he'll kill Ben... or worse. The only thing that chases those feelings away is the arm slung tight around his waist.

But Phasma's words have wormed their way into his brain, feeding that bit of darkness. She's been getting far too close, lately. First it was the smiles she'd give Ben, more often and much friendlier than most of his maids. Then, the touches. She helped him bathe, comb out his hair, rub the oils into his skin, and sometimes her hands would move just so and pull an odd reaction from him. It never went anywhere, just soft pleasures that left him hard and oversensitive. But he figured that as long as his lust remained unfulfilled by the Emperor -- and as long as Phasma did not go too far --, it didn't mean anything. But now that she seems to be coming for his husband, Ben can't distance himself from him any longer.

During dinner, after the second course has been served, the pair find themselves attached at the hip, no doubt due to Ben's white-knuckled grip on his husband's shirt back. Setting his fork down, the Emperor gives him a look that sets his heart racing and leans in to close the small gap between them.

"You've been exceptionally demanding all night," he whispers in Ben's ear. He tugs the young consort impossibly closer and presses his face deeper into his carefully curled locks. "Tell me what you want, and I'll give it to you."

Ben lifts a hand to cover his mouth -- something he vividly remembers being taught never to do -- and breathes a single word.

"You."

• • • • • • •

oh wow, hi, you’re the person who did that beautiful fanfic bookbinding project!

“the kindlefic” is my nickname for dangerous crowns, a novel that i’m going to selfpub soon. it’s a thriller about a general and spy who plot against a tyrannical king, with intrigue, romance, and adventure in a neoclassical fantasy world. for a while, i was trying to be cagey about the project, because i didn’t want to disappoint anyone if it fell through. i started calling it “the kindlefic” because it was suitably vague, and now i’m like a year into blogging about it and the nickname stuck.