{"id":1561,"date":"2012-03-30T13:08:47","date_gmt":"2012-03-30T17:08:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.webomator.com\/?p=1561"},"modified":"2012-03-30T13:08:47","modified_gmt":"2012-03-30T17:08:47","slug":"thrilling-tales-progress-on-the-next-thing-and-also-on-book-proofing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.webomator.com\/wordpress\/2012\/03\/30\/thrilling-tales-progress-on-the-next-thing-and-also-on-book-proofing\/","title":{"rendered":"Thrilling Tales – progress on The Next Thing, and also on book proofing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"Thrilling<\/center>\n

I’ve got so many irons in the fire – mainly, wrapping up the book designs for the two editions of The Lair of the Clockwork Book<\/em> and preparing for the next features at Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual<\/a> – that this morning I finally filled up a page in my notebook with lists of tasks. I will say that after a year and a half I do enjoy having a bit less structure to my days: but it turns out that a little bit of structure is sort of necessary.<\/p>\n

This picture is a very happy surprise. It’s a rough layout for the next real serial for the Thrilling Tales (not counting a sixteen week "Intermission" feature) and the happy part is that it works.<\/p>\n

That next Real Serial is going to be a little different in several ways. Its updates will be longer, but will appear only half as often; the illustrations will be in black and white – or, as we see here, at least in monotone; the illustrations themselves will be more tightly coupled to the print version of the story, with two-page spreads and wrapping text; and to support that I’ll have to add additional HTML markup to the story pages. The sample picture I dropped into this layout is one of the illustrations I did last year for Starship Sofa Stories, Vol 3<\/em><\/a>: those illustrations, with their old sf pulp flavor, were the whole seed that grew into this New Plan. It turns out that I’ve always wanted to be Virgil Finlay.\n\"Virgil\n

I mean, who wouldn’t?<\/p>\n

Now the two page spread at the beginning of this post has been compressed down to the usual Thrilling Tales size and the text has wrapped around the image – though not as neatly as we’ll see in the real story. I was convinced that this would not work<\/em> – that there just wouldn’t be enough space to show both the illustration and its text to their best advantage. I’ve been figuring that I’d need to create a mutant page layout to support the new format. Hence my surprise: it looks like the existing page layout can support these changes just fine. It won’t be as nifty as the print version but it will<\/em> be a pretty decent conversion.<\/p>\n

Now… I’m not sure yet how I’ll handle enlarging <\/em>the image for the pop-up windows; it’ll be a bit odd if that wrapping text disappears. But the first experiment, anyway, is a success.<\/p>\n

\n\"Thrilling<\/div>\n

In other news I’m now waiting for my second proof of the paperback edition of The Lair of the Clockwork Book<\/em>. I made substantial changes after I saw the first proof – much more substantial than I had expected to make. The dust has all settled now, though, and I expect that I’ll like what I see when the new version arrives.<\/p>\n

Once that fundamental design is set I can start the proofing process for the hardcover edition. I’ve seen paper and linen samples for that now. The interior paper is really, really nice but because it’s a brighter white I may have to make adjustments to the illustrations once I’ve seen the hardcover proof. All in all, though, it seems to be moving along on schedule.<\/p>\n

The paperback edition may be available late next week. It all depends on that second proof.<\/p>\n

Oh, and then there’s this guy above. The only thing I’m going to say about him<\/em> is that you should keep an eye on your kittens. ‘Cause you just ought to know.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n[tags]thrilling tales of the downright unusual, the lair of the clockwork book, page layouts, experiments, serial fiction, illustrated[\/tags]<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve got so many irons in the fire – mainly, wrapping up the book designs for the two editions of The Lair of the Clockwork Book and preparing for the next features at Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual – that this morning I finally filled up a page in my notebook with lists of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thrilling-tales","category-works-in-progress"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webomator.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webomator.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webomator.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webomator.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webomator.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.webomator.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webomator.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webomator.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webomator.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}