If all has gone to plan, this month’s newsletter will have gone out on April Fool’s Day. In case you’re wondering where I’ll attempt to pull the wool over your eyes, I can say without fear of contradiction that there are no April Fool pranks contained within. What there is instead is the launch of The Scriptorium Chronicle.
It has been a long time coming. After the usual delays and complications (and there were some last-minute doozies), it’s finally out. Printers’ proofs have turned into the real thing. See accompanying photo for it sitting on my desk. The bugbear turned out to be tham thar darned pesky fonts.
It took a lot of cursing and persistence to get the PDF to size correctly and accept the margins and gutters in the right places. The fonts were a magnitude of difficulty greater. It was easy enough to replace them in the Pages document, even if it meant tweaking the layout to accommodate the changes. Convincing the PDF that the offending fonts were no longer present was an entirely different matter. It took three days (yes, you read that correctly) to get a clean, copyright-compliant version that could be uploaded without any problems.
Works In Progress
The past month has been almost entirely devoted to getting The Scriptorium Chronicle ready for publication. Almost entirely is not quite totally, which meant that I was able to do a read-through of Pass The Duchy and make a few very minor tweaks to the text. I did this with the thought of entering it into a couple of competitions that will run over the summer and into autumn. This will give enough space to think about publication towards the end of the year if the feedback is favourable.
Once the flurry of activity with the Chronicle is over, I’ll be turning my attention to All Steamed Up. Having identified the issues with the opening and decided to put it on hold while other things got finished, I’m now ready to return to it. I know what I need to do to fix the opening, so have started to pull the text apart, reorder it, and begin the rewrite. I don’t think it’s going to be quite the big undertaking that I thought it was going to be, as the bulk of the issues are in the first 5,000 words. I’ve already rewritten the opening page, which had a different problem as it parodied (with permission, I hasten to add) the beginning of a book by a Famous Author who is now persona non grata.
The other thing I intend to do is hand-draw the cover of Pass The Duchy in a scriptorium scribes’ style. The version as it currently stands is digital and works well enough, but I want to see what the scribes would do with it. If it turns out as I hope, it will continue the thematic link between the Chronicle and the Duchy. Note that when I say digital, I mean drawn with digital drawing software (Inkscape, since you’re asking). I do not use AI. I’ll hold my hand up to taking a peek when it first appeared before quickly coming to the conclusion that it was a Bad Thing which I wanted nothing to do with. What you get from me is Human Authored. If you want AI slop, you’ll have to go elsewhere for it.
The Wildflower Meadow & The Kitchen Garden
Picture the scene: the greenhouse staging is stuffed full of seedlings. The greenhouse floor is filled with large containers of dahlias and peacock orchids. The windowsills in the house are filled with tomato, chilli and cucumber seedlings. The bare ground in the kitchen garden has trays of seedlings spread over it. First early potatoes have been planted, and the dining room table has maincrop potatoes being chitted before planting. Add to that the delivery of a large shipment of perennial plants in the post, and you get some idea of what the past month has been like. You’d almost get the impression that spring was here.
What I’ve Been Reading And Watching
I’m still reading The Light Ages. I know, I know, I’ve been reading this for the past two newsletters and am still not at the end. It’s nothing to do with the book that I’ve not finished it, but because one of the cats has taken to sitting on me while I’m reading in bed. As settling down means disturbing her, it means that I have to put it down as soon as she jumps on the bed if I’m to get settled comfortably.
I’m still finding it a fascinating read and am surprised at how scientifically advanced the monks were back in the 1300s.
As far as the telly is concerned, I’ve been watching For All Mankind on Apple TV (with one month of a free subscription left to go). It’s an alternative history set when the Russians are the first to land on the moon, and the space race continues.
I know that I’m late to the party with this (season 5 has just dropped, and I’m still on season 2), but wow, I’m enjoying it. The writing is about as good as it gets, and while the backdrop is astronauts and rockets and stuff, the characters are fleshed out and believable. There is tragedy along the way, which is why we’ve nicknamed it the space trauma show and only watch one episode at a time, as it punches you in the heart a few times. Other viewing has mostly been historical documentaries (Ancient Egypt seems to be on a lot at the moment) or comedies, such as My Name Is Earl. They have been an antidote to space trauma.
And Finally…
What a month! To say that it has been busy is an understatement. One book published, another ready to be published, and a third with a finished draft ready for its rewrite. I think I need to go and have a lie down!
Mark Weaver 