Experimental doodling

Since the stories start in two different places, it makes sense for the book to start in two different places, too, right? Right. I knew I wanted it to look like a normal book—though a double-sided one, with one side of the book containing Steve’s stories, and the other side, Bucky’s. So one side of the book looks like the picture above, with the yellow cover and grey spine, but the other:

Open either side and you’ll get Steve’s track on Steve’s side, and Bucky’s track on his. Get to the end of those tracks, and you find instructions to either flip and read the other track, or open to continue reading.

Here’s where it gets fun. The next story, Interlude, is where the two tracks converge, and this is where the reader should realize that the two tracks were in the same world all along. I wanted to convey that sort of “flipping” of the narrative by having the stories literally go in an unexpected and different direction—hence why you have to turn the book 90 degrees to continue reading.

And then… you literally just turn the page.

So the stories continue… still kind of on their separate tracks. We’ve got Steve’s and Bucky’s stories, running parallel but in full view. But you have to read both of them now to get to…

Steve and the Blindside is where it all comes together, when the reader (and Steve and Bucky) realize that the Reader character is the same person. It’s presented a little differently from the others, obviously, but you can’t access it unless you’ve read both Steve and Bucky’s lead-ins. And once you have read it, you reveal…

This, the final piece of the puzzle, where everything comes together. One volume, with all the remaining stories. And, on the flip side… the author’s commentary on how she came to write the story in this way.

*****

Let’s talk about the choices I made in how I bound all of this. I wasn’t originally going to make it this complicated; my original plan was to have the stories start from either end, and then once they meet in the middle, just keep going in that direction. I wasn’t sure how to make that happen, though, and in my searching trying to figure out what to do, I came across secret compartment books. I also realized that I had the base for a secret compartment book already: namely, a hardcover of HP and the Chamber of Secrets with a spine broken in three different places. Despite the fact that I don’t want copies of HP in my house anymore, I’m not a big fan of wasting something that could prove to be useful. Donating a broken copy of CoS would end up with it in the recycling bin, since the thrift store is unlikely to sell a book that’s falling to pieces. Wouldn’t turning it into something else be better? (You know. Transforming it, as it were. Yeah, terrible joke, very sorry, will delete if someone requests.) Plus, the Bucky storyline has a HP element in it, in that Bucky and the Reader character bond over HP. Using CoS as a base for this bind seemed like a good idea to me!

Which is how I decided: the broken textblocks, with one side hiding a tiny book holding the end of the story, would be CoS, and I’d build on them with the pieces leading up to that. I worked my way from the end to the beginning, binding first the tiny book (a quarto, incidentally), and including an extra-long ribbon on the spine. I then carved out the cavity in the largest of the CoS textblocks, using glue on the exposed edges (both inside and out) to give it stability. I glued the other end of the tiny book’s ribbon to the back of the hole in the textblock, then covered it with the same paper that I used for covering the tiny book, creating my hidden space. Done!

After that, I started working my way up. It took a while to think of how to lay out Blindside so that it stretched across both sides of the textblocks, but didn’t get destroyed when the textblocks were folded. I think figuring this step out was the very last thing I did—I had plans for nearly everything else—and I really like how it turned out, with the story coming from two places but needing to be read together.

Blindside, Shelves, and Ballet, are all pamphlet-bound, with a single signature sewn directly to their covers. I also included an extra piece of cardstock, folded the opposite way, which serves as a sort of anchor to the books. It’s the anchor that is glued to the texblock, and allows the reader to flip the books to the side after reading. I figured this was probably the safest way to attach the stories to the textblock, so they don’t fall out or end up in the wrong order.

All of this is hidden behind Interlude—which I’ll talk about now, but bear in mind, it was the last piece of the puzzle to be assembled. I was able to print Interlude as a single-page broadsheet on legal paper, using an accordion fold so that it would hide when the book is closed, but be fully visible once open. It’s pasted on either end to manila folders, which in turn are pasted to the textblocks. The part of the paper that is not pasted to the folders are backed by another piece of cardstock, so that they’re a little easier to read, and hopefully to prevent tearing or accidental incorrect folds.

With that done, I focused on the beginning of the story. Both Steve and Bucky’s tracks are technically perfectbound, because I needed to match the CoS textblock, and those measurements are 6x9, which is bigger than I could do as a signature with my printer. I also decided to go with perfectbound because CoS is perfectbound, and this would help match that a little better.

But in the end, I actually did stitch the pages, in a sort of single-stitch line a quarter inch from the spine, because I was worried that only having glue wouldn’t stand up to the excessive handling they would receive. (Turns out I didn’t take a picture of this—whoops. And it’s not really visible any longer either, but if Aspen looks closely when she lifts the cover, she might be able to see it.)

This ended up being super beneficial, because it gave me an anchor when attaching the covers.

About the covers:

So like I said, I used the CoS textblocks for the interior of the book. (And they’re all there, except for maybe a page or two, plus I added extra so that both sides of the book are even when it’s fully open, which lets the Interlude lay flat. I got through almost all of my misprints, yay.)

The head and endboards are the actual CoS covers as well. After separating the textblock from the cover, I cut off the original spine (which was going to be far too narrow for this, not to mention it was too rounded for my plan), and used the boards as the boards for this book. Because I needed the book to open flat, I decided to go with a secret Belgian binding… but I altered it a little bit, since I needed both sides to be readable before you actually open the book all the way, otherwise you risk tearing the booklets inside.

So, there’s actually five parts to the cover: the head- and endboards, the spine, and then what I started calling the inserts. And as luck turned out, the boards were exactly the width I needed so that the seam between them and the inserts was right where I’d done my reinforcement stitching.

I bound the head and endboards in the paper—blue for Bucky’s side, yellow for Steves, and the marblelized blue-and-yellow for the inside, and then a grey bookcloth for the inserts and spine. Black HTV and a Cricut machine did the spine decoration, and I bore the holes with this nifty tool that I found at Michaels, and worked like a charm. Then I sewed the whole thing together with embroidery thread.

Now came time to put the whole thing together. I stitched the seam between the head/endboards and the inserts to my reinforcement line, weaving back and forth to create a nice, solid connection. Once done on both sides, the book was assembled.

Mostly. Now that could lay it flat, I could paste in Interlude, and then it was finally done.

The whole thing took about two months, from the moment I started working on the layouts, to the minute I finished pasting on the cover decoration. The hardest part was trying to figure out how it would all go together, but I am so ridiculously pleased with the final result (despite my many, many misprints, and many, many mistakes, and many, many things I would fix if I were to do it again). I had so much fun trying to figure out this puzzle of a presentation, and how to do it in a way that would make sense for both the story and for a reader who might not know what to expect.

I loved doing every single part of this project. I am itching to do another secret compartment book again. (I have six more HP books, if anyone’s game to let me destroy another!) I almost want to do it again, to see if I can’t fix what I fucked up, and I also never want to do it again, because this was easily the most difficult project I’ve done to date. I am thrilled beyond words with the result.

(Things I learned: pick a book that is thick enough—if I did this again, I’d probably go with OotP so I don’t have to add more to even out the sides. Be more careful laying in the pamphlets; Bucky and the Shelves runs a bit close to Blindside, which makes it difficult to open the latter. And think double hard before doing the titles—I messed up and had to patch the cover to Bucky’s track, which was extra annoying because I had a limited amount of that paper and it took weeks to even find a good color match.)

In case you need more visual: here’s a video of the book, and me showing how it works.