Cecilia Tan's Blog, page 41

Type and Design Tips for self- and small publishers

Self-publishing and niche press publishing is going through an explosion right now, thanks to the ease with which modern tech lets us produce digital books and connect with the readers for those books.

However, a lot of folks, both writers and small presses alike, are pushing forward producing books with only a vague idea of the rules and standards for design, typesetting, and other elements of production that formerly would have been farmed out to a trained professional.

A lot of what I see going around is some re-invention of the wheel. Plus I see a lot of rookie mistakes being made that are just ignorance of the principles of type and design. All too often I see POD books that look, sadly, like they came from someone who didn't know anything about making physical books. I'm not talking about the manufacturing, which has gotten to the point you really can't tell a POD book from a traditionally printed book. I'm talking about basic errors in typesetting and design.

The thing is, these things aren't that hard to fix if you know what they are, so I got the idea to do a series of blog posts on the basics. This'll not only help people do it themselves, but will also help tremendously those who go the route of paying someone else to do it for them. Because how are you going to know if your designer is good and worth the money or if you might as well have done it yourself? I'll tell you how.

I didn't get into the book biz intending to be a book designer. But when you run your own press, sometimes you're everything, from publicist to janitor. So I've had to learn the basics of book design and production. (I also had a class on the subject at Northeastern University many summers ago when I first started working in book publishing…)

So, forthwith, I begin here a series of short blog posts with Clues on book design and production that You Might Not Know.

The biggest question for me is always how much am I going to do myself, and how much am I going to farm out for a price? Sometimes it really is easier and more cost-effective to just pay someone to do, other times it makes more sense to pay "sweat equity."

At this point, at Circlet Press, we pay Jim Brown of JimandZetta.com to do all our ebook conversions, as it reached the point where it was more efficient and cost-effective to pay him to do it rather than muddle through it ourselves anymore. But when it comes to Print on Demand books (or printed books of any kind) I've been keeping the design and production management in-house for the past several years for the simple reason that it wasn't in the budget to do it any other way.

I'm guessing that most of you would rather invest a little time in learning how to do some things rather than shell out to a third party, and that's why you're reading this. But do remember that it is a legitimate (and fairly standard) business plan, too, to just Hire Qualified Professionals to take on that piece.

In fact, that's where I'm going to start, with hiring out. But, I hear you asking, how much should I pay a book designer or freelance production person? That is the subject of this first post. (below) Then in the one after I'll get into what to do if you decide to Do It Yourself with typesetting and design.

1. Farming Out to Professionals

2. Elements of Book Design

3. Page Layouts

4. Widows, orphans, and hyphenation

5. "Smart" quotes, section breaks, and fleurs

6. Ebook design versus print design

P.S. Comments are welcome! Please include pointers to other online resources for small publishers, as well!

* * * *

FARMING OUT TO THE PROS

Someone recently asked me "how much should I pay a book designer"? The short but frustrating answer is: it really depends.

First of all, I realized that is too simple a question, since most of the design, layout, and production people I know vary widely in the amount of work they quote per project, depending on what the client needs.

I feel like there are four main jobs that could be part of the freelancer's job, or they might be separate, depending on who you hire and for how much.

1) Cover design — Assuming that the publisher/client is supplying the cover art or illustration, or at least a budget for the designer to go and get some stock photography or something, this job usually includes creating a few versions of a mock cover for the client to choose between (i.e. the same image treated different ways, with different colors or styles of type, for example), and then providing a finished file suitable for the printer to manufacture from, which includes the complete front, spine, and back cover, barcode, etc. The client must supply all the copy to go on the cover and the client is responsible for proofreading it.

2) Interior design — "just the design." Coming up with the basic elements of what fonts to use, how headings should look, conceptualizations of the pages, breaks, dropcaps, margin size, etc etc, creating a template that could then be handed off to an intern or in-house assistant to actually input all the pages and apply all the designed styles.

3) Interior design including making all the pages — includes designing the look of the book, inputting all the pages, and then also inputting all changes to the proofs, right through to producing an electronic file suitable to go to the printer. THIS IS MUCH MORE COMMON THAN "just the design."

4) Production management — including all three of the above steps as well as interfacing with the printer to get the book manufactured to specifications, approving printers proofs, etc.

These days most people who ask me the "what should I pay a designer?" question actually need the complete package including production interfacing, but sometimes they just want the person to do 1) or 2).

In my experience, cover design ranges from a flat fee as low as $250 (not including art acquisition costs) up to about $900, while others charge an hourly rate of $25 to $50 per hour and may even advertise "covers for only $50″. Interior design usually runs about the same range in hourly fees, and runs $500 to $2000 flat fee depending highly on the complexity of the project, whether there are illustrations and multiple types of formatting, and how intensive the proof corrections stage is expected to be. Typesetting a simple novel is a lot easier than doing an illustrated cookbook, for example. And if you need complete production management on top, that it might be anywhere from $100 to $500 more.

Thing is, if you find a designer willing to do your cover for fifty bucks and your interior for $200, sometimes you get what you pay for. The designers who are charging $2500 for that package instead of $250 may really be ten times better.

If you're going to hire a designer, insist on seeing samples of their work beforehand, and even better is get a recommendation from another publisher you know. And when you find someone who fits your budget, turnaround time, and aesthetic needs, KEEP THEM. Give them all the work you can!

By the way, any freelancers reading this, feel free to chime in with your actual rates or thoughts on the way I've divided this. I'm so used to bargain hunting and trying to find the lowest possible budget for every book that it's been a while since I hired someone really good at it.

Next post, my tips on how to get started doing your own typesetting and design. Knowing how to do your own typesetting and design will also help you judge the work of a freelancer you hire, as well. (Click here to continue!)

Coffee/Tea Shops for Writers in Iceland

(This was intended for posting at teawritings.com, but unfortunately my URL registration lapsed and someone is squatting it now. So I'm posting it here.)

So, I went to Iceland.

My intention on going to Iceland wasn't to see a lot of tea shops, but when I woke up with a sore throat and stuffy nose on the morning I had been planning on a whale watching boat trip, I decided I'd be much happier spending the day in warm places drinking warm things. I'm good at making decisions that make me happy. So I created myself a tour of places to drink warm things (and write) in Reykjavik.

I love coffee/tea shops. In recent years I've also developed an appreciation for writing in them as well. It's not unusual for me to block out an entire day planning to go from one cafe to the next to the next in Harvard Square, writing away for 6 or more hours in 1 hour to 90 minute chunks in each shop.

My general rule of thumb when I do this is that one drink entitles me to an hour in the cafe, and if it is not crowded, perhaps up to two. When it is crowded, I'll either give way to another customer after an hour, or buy something additional. A typical pot of tea takes an hour for me to drink anyway. I've followed this rule in cafes all over the USA (and now the world) and I've never been asked to leave a place or hurry up, yet.

Downtown Reyjavik, the capital city of Iceland, is of similar size and density to Harvard Square, only replace the college students with tourists. Like Harvard Square it has a lot of restaurants, bookstores, and coffee shops, as well as designer clothing, art, jewelry, places to hear music, and lots of people walking among them.

I'm sitting in the Eymundsson Bookstore cafe as I type this, which is the last stop on my cafe tour today… I think. (Who knows, I might yet find another one on my way back to my hotel. This bookstore is hardly the only one, and is just up the hill from the other big one that has a cafe also. EDIT: See below…!) Eymundsson Bookstore has entrances on two streets, one on Skolavordustigur , and one on Grettisgata, where there are also outdoor seats if the weather is nice (which today it is not). It's always nice to be among books.

But let's start this tour at the beginning, with Cafe Babalu.

I discovered Cafe Babalu on my way down the hill from Hallsgrimskirkja, the big church at the top of the hill that overlooks Reykjavik. Going up in the 8-story bell tower is a recommended tourist activity, so I walked up there at noon today and heard the chimes ring. From there I headed straight down one of the main streets, Skolavordustigur (which is the closest I can render the name in English).

Cafe Babalu!

On the ground floor, Cafe Babalu has a vestibule full of posters and notices for upcoming events, concerts, holistic healers, etc. In other words, it didn't give the impression of a touristy place, but a real place where local folk probably hang out. You go up the stairs into the actual cafe space, which is divided into two small rooms by the water closet. Small tables and comfy couches and armchairs are tucked under the eaves of the slanted roof. Every space on the walls and dormers is taken up with quirky art as well as postcards from visitors from all over the world. My first impression was it would be a very comfortable place to pass an afternoon, and I was right.

Tea was in bags from several different companies I did not recognize, including the London Fruit and Herb Company, and one import company with an Icelandic name I don't recall. (Ogg Something…) They give you the cup of hot water and you pull your own tea bag from the selection of boxes. A cup costs 320 kronur (about $3.20 at current exchange) and they gladly offered me more hot water to re-steep. They also have "World Famous" New York Style cheesecake which I did not get, but several other patrons did. They serve sandwiches and hot food of various kinds, too. I ended up getting the cauliflower soup, which was outstanding, and the bread it came with was delicious as well, with some kind of seeds in. ($5) I had a nice Assam and a not bad Green Tea with Black Currant. Both were perfectly acceptable for bag tea, and the atmosphere was conducive to writing and hanging out. One family came in and played Sequence, the board game my parents are addicted to. Many young couples, both gay and straight, came and went throughout the afternoon. The music was an eclectic mix of American standards of many genres, from big band and Frank Sinatra to 80s pop and classic rock. Overall the place had a nice hippie/Bohemian feel.

The Wifi at Cafe Babalu was free and there were power strips near many of the seats. In fact, every cafe I went to had working Wifi, which is better than I can say for many American cities, and three of the four had plentiful and obvious power plugs. Even though they turned out to have the smallest tea servings and only bagged tea, I liked it best.

Cafe Babalu got a bit crowded after 4pm, so I moved on down the street to look for another place to try. My next stop was Kaffitar, which was about as close to a Starbucks or a Peet's Coffee and Tea as I've seen outside the US. Like Starbucks, the cashier takes your order while the barista whips it up and calls it out on the sideboard, an they have a small selection of pastries and chocolate. Lots of people were sitting solo with laptops along the sides and in the window, while groups were mostly at the tables in the center.

Kaffitar: very Starbucks-like, in a good way.

The chalkboard menu was entirely in Icelandic but like many things, if you just sound it out, it's obvious what it says. That "soja mjolk" was "soy milk" seemed obvious. So were "sukkulat" (chocolate) and "kaffi" (coffee), "te" (tea) etc. Icelandic has its share of English cognates one can make out, like "undir" for "under", "Opid/Lokad" for "Open/Closed (locked)" and so on. But this isn't true of all food words–most menus I needed to read the English version, but not in Kaffitar. I think it's possible that when it comes to tea, coffee, and chocolate, which were so widely traded from their source lands, you're going to find a uniformity of the names in any of the seafaring trade countries. After all, chai, tcha, cha, tea, ti, tea are all the same word.

Which leads me to wondering if tea shop/coffee shop culture is similar all over the world, if it comes from similar roots. I've had this thought before, at the Samovar Tea Lounge in San Francisco, where at the very least it becomes clear that at least in many European designations (Russian, French, Spanish, Danish…) that the coffee shop/tea shop as a highly similar sort of place is uniform. And comparing it to the Asian version of the tea house, well, I feel a lot of parallels. Which leads me to conclude that…? Intellectuals like drinking boiled water? Yeah.

I got a soy milk chai latte at Kaffitar and it was quite nicely made, not overly sweet, and served in a tall, thick glass. Chai is $4, with 60 cents extra for soja mjolk.

I didn't stay long in Kaffitar, just under an hour, as it looked like the rain actually lightened up for a bit, so I explored the town some more. At 5pm most of the clothing and jewelry stores close up, but the touristy places and the bookshops remain open. I looked through the window at a shop called Mokka (which I suppose is a cognate for Mocha), but didn't stop. If I were to come back to Reykjavik someday, I would probably give Mokka a try as well. I stuck my head into Prikid, which advertised itself as the "oldest coffee shop in Iceland" but it was more of a bar than a coffee shop in the mold I was looking for. There were very few seats and it didn't look comfortable.

Prikid.

Which leads me to my next distinction, there seems to be a divide between the coffee shops that don't serve alcohol and those that do. Those that do seem to be more like bars generally. Not that bars/pubs are not closely associated with many writers throughout history as well, but none of the ones I found in Reykjavik seemed quite what I was looking for, and typically I prefer the style where beer and alcohol are not served. (An exception might have been the Two Sawyers pub in Canterbury, where I would have gladly spent an afternoon writing had I been in town long enough, but they really didn't serve tea or coffee except as an afterthought to their pub menu.)

Eymundsson from the Skolavordustigur side.

After walking around quite a bit more, and window shopping at some gift shops, I ended up back at the place I am now, the Eymundsson Bookstore. I had wandered in here before on my way down Skolavordustigur from Cafe Babalu, and came back in on my way back to my hotel from the Grettisgata entrance.

From the Grettisgata side.

Here I found the best tea so far, served loose leaf in a pot with a separate cup! Heaven. And only $3.60 for a pot that has lasted me so far for nearly an hour. I'm drinking a mango sencha that seems quite decent. They use a deep steep basket — I should have taken it out of the pot long ago, but it hasn't grown excessively bitter. I have no idea what brand of tea it is, but the cafe inside the Eymundsson seems to be a franchise of the local chain "Te & Kaffi." (I saw two other locations of Te & Kaffi while walking around, and one at the airport.) It was much more crowded in here in the afternoon, but now that it is dinner hour (7pm) there are fewer people and plenty of empty tables. Like both previous places, the Wifi works perfectly, is free, and there are plugs.

Now I should probably go find some actual dinner, though.

LATER: Well, I had dinner at a thai soup shop called Noodle Station, which smelled hearteningly delicious as I went up the street. (Recall I have a cold.) They sell only two things: thai chicken soup and thai beef soup. If you've had vietnamese pho, this was similar, but slightly more spicy. Rice noodles, broth, mint leaves, bean sprouts, topped with ground peanuts and chili paste. Perfect.

And then on my way back to my hotel from there, I ended up stopping in the Mal og Menning bookstore on Laugavegur Street, which is still open at 9pm local time. And which has on its second floor the Sufistinn Book Cafe. Their logo is sort of Starbucks-ish from a distance.

From Iceland Food & Drink

Inside I found a busy but not overly crowded cafe in a similar style to the one in Eymundsson (and indeed to bookstore cafes in US places such as the late Borders stores). Here again I found a nice list of loose leaf tea that I could even see in glass jars, and a selection of pastry. (A sign on the wall also offered some kind of tikka masala curry.) I opted for a Vietnamese Jasmine, which I thought would go nicely after my noodle soup dinner. Not the best jasmine I have ever had, but then I have had some very high grade jasmines in my time. Again the Wifi was free-flowing. I did not get a seat near the edge of the room or window, but it looks like there are maybe not quite as many power plugs here as in the previous three shops I had visited.

From Iceland Food & Drink

The jasmine was served in an oversized coffee cup, with the leaves in a clamp-style strainer. I think they might close here in half an hour as the staff are doing some vaguely cleany-uppy things behind the counter, but the people sitting around me seem in no hurry. There are two other people with laptops (both the same variety of MacBook Pro as I have, interestingly enough), one writing in a journal by hand, one reading a book, one reading a magazine, a mom and her young daughter both reading, and then three small groups of people chatting over their coffee.

And now, really, I will go back to my hotel, since I must be up early to catch my flight back to Boston. Once I get there, I might brew myself a cup of ginger herbal (Twinings, purchased at a Tesco Express in London). All these civilized countries have water boilers in the hotel rooms, even the cheap-ass place I stayed by King's Cross. (Of course, the coffee's instant, but I don't care about that…)

Until next, my lovelies, over a warm cup.

The tea set-up in my room at the 4th Floor Hotel.

More from Iceland! (finally posted)

More from Iceland! (OK, I thought I'd have a chance to post this from the airport, but I didn't, and now i've been home for a week and I'm just getting to it…!)

So, the folks working the reception desk at my hotel are filipinos. One from Cebu and one from Leyte. The guy from Cebu said he used to live on Long Island. The woman from Leyte told me there are about 300 filipinos in Iceland (out of 300,000 total population). I've met more filipinos now in Iceland and in London than I have in Boston. Funny, no?



I continue to have the experience that people in foreign countries tend to try their native language with me first before English. My mixed-blood face is hard to peg as American, I think, and I don't come across as stereotypically American. This isn't surprising to me in hispanic countries, where dark-haired mestizo are pretty common, or in Asia, same, but in Iceland? But maybe it's just something about my mien that I always look like I belong in places. This is probably why people always come up and ask me directions, too, even at conventions I'm not running and in cities where I've never been. My family is used to it now. A typical exchange:

Clueless person: Hello, can you tell me where to find the ladies' room/train station/whatever?

Me: Oh yes, it's right down there, turn right and you can't miss it.

Family member: It's amazing that people always make a beeline for you when they need directions.

Me: That happens to me all the time. I have no idea why.

Family member: But you knew the answer! So obviously people make a good choice.

Given that today was cold and rainy and I woke up with a sore throat, and I decided spending the day on a whale watching boat was a bad idea, I opted instead for a self-made tour of the coffee/tea shops in Reykjavik. In other words, I got some writing done, posted my trip photos so far, and such. I enjoy sitting in coffee shops (though I'm drinking tea) very much, so this turned out to be a terrific way to see downtown Reykjavik, a few blocks at a time. A full write up of all the shops I went to will be posted at TeaWritings.com, my tea blog–or maybe it won't as it appears some web squatter has my URL now. I'll post it here in a bit, then.

I took photos of a few of the interesting-looking buildings in Reykjavik. If I had more time, I could make a Tumblr just for Weird Art in Iceland, as well. The island seems to encourage a kind of quirky, pop-influenced art style, seen on everything from wall murals to sculptures in hotel lobbies to hanging on the walls of restaurants, as well as in galleries. From what I understand, the music scene is similar. On an island with a population of only 300,000, and the city holding only 100,000, it seems anyone involved in creative pursuits is also going to know anyone else in that scene, too, and it's a kind of fertile hotbed. As the Icelandair ads proclaim, ten icelandic rock bands a year "set out to conquer the world" and the prime minister is listed in the phone book. I find it interesting that one of the bigger cultural festivals that happens in Reykjavik is their annual Gay Pride parade, too.

From Iceland Photos #1

The rain slacked off around 8pm last night and suddenly the streets and sidewalks became much more full of people than they had been all day. At 8 the sky is still quite bright, even when cloudy, as at this time of year sunset isn't until close to 11pm. People were still out walking and milling around enjoying the not-rain at 10pm when I walked back to my hotel after the bookstore I was in closed.

As with many island economies, in Iceland food can be quite expensive (typically twice what I'd expect to pay in US for the same meals) but I had a hotel with a full breakfast buffet included in the price of the room that helped keep the cost down.

I woke up on my third day in Iceland to more unrelenting gray skies and rain. Actually, a tiny sliver of sun tried to show itself while we were on the way to the airport. It never broke through the clouds, but did result in a large, faint rainbow on the horizon, across the lava fields. Then the clouds thickened again, and it was pouring quite steadily by the time we pulled up at Keflavik. As one of the clothing companies from Iceland (66 North) says in their ads, you have to respect Mother Nature, but she doesn't have to respect you. I still had a nice time, even if I did catch a cold.

From Faint rainbow seen through the bus window!

Overall, Iceland was a very civilized stopover on my way back from the UK and I'd recommend it to anyone flying Icelandair, especially since they make it worth your while with lower fares for those who stay over. Outdoorsy people will get the most out of a multi-day stay, whereas for me, two to three days was plenty to soak up the sights and culture.

Harry Potter photos from Diacon and around London

Just a handful of the photos I took at Diacon Alley and other places around London where Potter kept rearing up:

Harry Potter convention and London trip

Iceland So Far…

I arrived in Iceland yesterday at about 3pm local time. Ours was the only flight arriving at that time so they whisked us through passport control. 40 minutes later I had my bags and was on my way to the Blue Lagoon geothermal spa.

I had the Blue Lagoon recommended to me by a friend who knows from hot springs. And they make it so easy! Take the bus from the airport to the spa, put your luggage in a locker, rent a towel, and off you go. There are showers and all that stuff, with special hair conditioning shampoo and conditioner to take the minerals out of your hair at the end. If you want, you can book a massage and that sort of thing, but I think most folks just go there to soak.

It's called the Blue Lagoon because the shallow pools literally look like they are filled with bluish milk. Imagine Blueberry Quik instead of Strawberry. This is seawater mixed with geothermal hot springs water, very minerally. Alongside the pools are boxes of white mud for giving yourself a facial with and most of the people you see bobbing around in the hot pools are wearing self-applied masks of it. This makes for a bit of a comedic look, as everyone looks like a mime or off-duty clown.

The system is very smart. They give you a bracelet to wear that has a chip in it. When you lock a locker, you press the chip to it so you don't have to carry a key or remember a PIN. And when you "buy" things within the spa (since you've already locked your wallet into the locker), you just beep your chip which keeps a running tally.

This means its very easy to float up to the bar out in the hot pools and order a beer, or in my case, a "green is good" smoothie: mango, orange, pineapple, spinach and ginger. Very thick and very good. Plus healthy. My only concern about the smoothie is (since I've become something of a local-eating movement type) that all of it had to be flown in from afar. Then again, this is an island where nearly everything has to be flown in, isn't it? Now that Viking raiders don't go off plundering and pillaging? I enjoyed the smoothie anyway, and I stayed floating around in the pools, looking for hotter and hotter spots (they move around a bit) for about two hours. I could hardly believe that two hours had gone by. The mineral-rich water makes floating very easy if you have a body type like mine and I probably could have even had a nap floating there on my back.

There was a persistent cold rain falling, and a whipping wind, but when one it mostly submerged in hot water that hardly seems to matter. It did mean that upon exiting the pools one wanted to hightail it into the shower though.

Ahhhh luxurious shower! After the tiny trickle of water that came out of the water-heating box in the shower at the Kipps Hostel in Canterbury, the vagaries of the dormitory shower in Kent, and the sometimes completely non-existent water flow at the King's Cross hotel in London, this was All The Water I'd been missing in the preceding week. With the hot water created by Mother Nature, it's one thing they have in abundance here in Iceland. Giant sunflower style showerheads douse you liberally. I conditioned my hair well and then got dried off and dressed again.

Out in the parking lot the same bus driver who had brought me from the airport was now on the run to Reykjavik. "No one goes back to the airport at this time of day," he told me. I suppose they know the Icelandair schedules. The bus filled up and he drove us to the main bus depot, where we were dispersed to smaller vans that took us directly to our hotels.

If I'd wanted, I could have eaten dinner at the restaurant at the Blue Lagoon, but I decided I wanted to go into town and see what there was instead. I had seen a documentary on the airplane about a locavore movement among Icelandic chefs. "No more foie gras," one of them had said, "and much more seafood."

I arrived at my hotel, the 4th Floor Hotel, although it's actually on the 1st, 2nd, and 4th floors of the building it is in, and was delighted to find my room is a small, modern paradise. Not as small as my room in Hong Kong, where it was literally a challenge to open or close the door with my suitcase in the room, but very lavishly appointed with nice furniture and a decked out private bathroom with another huge showerhead. I'll upload photos later. And both wired and wireless Internet!

I went out to hunt for dinner after checking out the restaurant listings online. Within easy walking distance of my hotel there was Thai, pizza, Indian, Italian, Nepalese, sushi, and Argentinian steakhouse, Mediterranean… But what about icelandic? My walk brought me to the place with the unlikely name Hereford Steakhouse.

Inside I discovered an upscale steakhouse much in the American mold, except if one wanted, instead of having beef steak fro the menu, one could have "locally sourced" whale. Or puffin. Well, I was looking for something that wasn't like the smoothie I'd had earlier, and I found it. I opted for the whale set menu, which opened with a truly amazing lobster soup. The chef refused to divulge the recipe, but it was incredibly rich, without being either creamy or tomatoey. No idea what was in it besides lobster. It was as if he had made lobster demiglace. Incredible. Served with a nice homemade herb bread and olive tapenade.

Then came the whale steak, served on a heated iron slab with a baked potato and vegetables. Honestly the thing that blew me away was the baked potato, which had intensely potatoey flavor, served with just butter which highlighted the intensity of the flavor. Since the only potatoes I've eaten in the past 2-3 years have been from our farm share, and those are quite incredible, I was muchly impressed by this spud. The whale itself was good, too, like a very very lean beef but devoid of any gristle, served with a pepper sauce (like a peppercorn demiglace).

Then came dessert, which was a berry sorbet with some small, sweet strawberries, served on a bed of rich, creamy Icelandic skyr (yogurt). Perfect.

There were more people walking around after dinner than before, so I wandered a bit more, coming to a book shop that was open and browsing there for a while, and passing by a few more pubs and bars. It was still raining and cold or I might have walked around more. At 10pm it's still quite bright here. I returned to the hotel feeling tired.

As I was falling asleep I began to cough with some post nasal drip. Apparently my body doesn't like all this rainy drizzle, even if I'm in hot springs or warm clothes, and I woke up this morning with a sore throat. The weather is the same, cold, rain, and windy, so I decided not to do a whale watch trip. The visibility is not very good, and I won't enjoy myself if I'm sick and trying to keep warm.

Instead I slept in, then had a leisurely breakfast at my hotel, where a very nice breakfast buffet is included in the price of the room. I had a nice little egg frittatta, a potato pancake fried in bacon fat, bacon, miniature crepe filled with jam, a small cinnamon roll, and I don't remember what else. Best breakfast of the trip so far.

Then I bundled up again (yes, I brought clothes in case of this kind of weather here, I was warned) and went out walking. I found the big church without too much trouble since at 12 noon its bells go off with a miniature bell concert. I walked until I came to it and discovered an organ concert starting. I thought about going to the concert, but I could hear it quite well while walking around the church, and then paid the 500 kronur (about $5) to go up in the bell tower. Didn't stay up there long, as the rain and wind were just as bad or worse up there, but you do get a nice view of the city.

From there I walked down the hill toward the city center, and came to this cafe, and here I sit. I'm having a green tea with black currant, from the London Herb & Fruit Company, very tasty and soothing to the throat. When it's done, I'll probably try another variety. And then in a bit I'll walk around some more until I find another cafe. (I saw a few closed ones last night.) Tomorrow morning I leave early for the airport back to Boston!

Recap of my madcap dash through London

Well, I left Canterbury on Sunday when the Harry Potter convention Diacon Alley ended (see previous posts in my fandom LJ for details), but upon traveling to London found that my HP fan experience really didn't end. Not that this was truly surprising, given the how many scenes in the books take place there, not to mention how many scenes in my Harry Potter role playing games have been set there as well. (I'll never forget meeting Severus by the Traitor's Gate… and Lucius shortly thereafter… *shivers*)

My first night in London I found my hotel near King's Cross without too much trouble. In fact, it was called the King's Cross Hotel. It's on Argylle Street, and is one of about twenty or so small hotels clustered on that street and the next one over just across Euston Road from the train stations (King's Cross and St. Pancras).

Before booking there I had looked for rooms online and read many reviews, so I was prepared for the shared bathroom facilities. Basically, I booked the cheapest private room I could find that wasn't a bunk room in a hostel. And that's exactly what I got, a room that was just a smidge up from hostel level, and remarkably similar to the dormitory room I'd left at University of Kent. One single bed, a desk, a wardrobe for clothes, a water kettle, and a small sink for running water inside the room. The toilet room and shower room was down the hall, and the breakfast room downstairs. The place was quite clean and the staff very friendly, but many Americans I know would freak out at the thought of sharing a toilet and shower with strangers. For the price, though, I thought it quite reasonable, and more secure and private than an actual hostel.

I rested for a few hours, watching a baseball game via streaming video live from New York, and then at 10pm local time decided to go out walking. I explored the King's Cross/Islington area for about two hours. The weather was pleasant and although it's a fairly quiet neighborhood at night, there were other single women and couples walking about and it seemed quite safe. I popped into a Tesco Express and stocked up on Pot Noodle, which is the UK equivalent of Cup Noodle. (Strangely, I found it not salty enough, even with the "soy boost" packet…) I've now had instant ramen on pretty much every continent I've been to, in pretty much every country, ironically, except Japan (wasn't there long enough).

On the walk back I came to a crowd of people at King's Cross Station and discovered they were clustered around Platform 9 3/4! If you read my earlier entry about arrival in London last week, I went searching for the platform and found King's Cross undergoing massive renovation, closing off access to where the platform actually should be. I did find a sign at the doorway into the construction site saying the following, though: "Please use Western Range Site Entrance Located at Harry Potter."

Meanwhile, they had apparently moved the "trolley stuck in the wall" and "Platform 9 3/4″ sign to an exterior wall, which they papered over with a giant photo of the column. People speaking at least four different languages (Italian, Chinese, English, and something I couldn't make out but which might have been Hebrew?) were taking photos of their friend and family pretending to push the trolley. I didn't take a photo then, figuring I'd be passing that spot many more times and not wanting to fight the crowd.

The next morning I got up to enjoy the "full English breakfast" at the hotel included with my room, which included baked beans, fried egg, voluminous toast, butter and jam, fruit juice, and tea. It was my first time having beans on toast and I quite liked it. Then I went off to the Westminster boat docks to catch a tour boat to Greenwich.

The Westminster docks are right near the foot of St. Stephen's Tower, the clock tower that holds the bell known as Big Ben. Which is right at the houses of parliament, which I can neither type nor say without song-virusing myself with "We've got the funk." Directly across the river is the London Eye, the largest Ferris wheel in the world, 400 feet tall. The boat trip was an hour up to Greenwich, accompanied the whole time by the patter of one of the crew, who pointed out many places on the river where infamous criminals were drowned, pubs where infamous incidents occurred, and where scenes from Oliver Twist took place.

Another quintessentially British book was in my mind when I debarked at the Royal Naval College, however–or rather series of books, since it was impossible to be there without thinking about the books of Patrick O'Brian. The college buildings have been converted to other uses some of the time, including Trinity Music school, but the chapel, seaman's dining hall, and several others are maintained in splendour (sic).

Then I climbed up the hill to the Royal Observatory, where the original Harrison Clocks are still in operation. (Check out Dava Sobel's book LONGITUDE for the saga of John Harrison and the race to solve the problem of calculating longitude while at sea). Also there are many telescopes used by royal astronomer John Flamsteed in the time of Isaac Newton. In fact, there was a kind of rivalry between Flamsteed and Newton, and Newton got hold of 3/4 of Flamsteed's unfinished star catalogue and convinced the queen it should be published. Newton wanted the data to further his own studies and felt Flamsteed's perfectionism and waiting until the sky catalog was "done" was foolish, but Flamsteed tracked down and burned all but about 100 copies of the incomplete publication. As it was, Flamsteed died before the catalog was done — as it was he was only doing the northern sky while Edmund Halley did the southern. Halley, he of the comet, became the next Royal Astronomer. Now I have the urge to read/write Newton/Flamsteed slash. Perhaps I'll request it at Yuletide.

From there, I took the boat back to Westminster and then walked to afternoon tea at the Charing Cross Hotel. I had a thought to go looking at the bookshops on Charing Cross Road (plus the supposed entrance to Diagon Alley is there…) but I ended up walking around Trafalgar Square, then got bad directions, and was late to my tea reservation. Just made it in time to be served, though, so it all worked out in the end. London is even worse than Boston when it comes to a dearth of street signs. What ones there are are on buildings, seemingly at random places, with many streets just not marked at all. Fortunately at each bus stop there is a small map of the few blocks around, so for a pedestrian one can continually re-orient. But I would never try to drive there (besides, my left/right dyslexia kicks up something fierce with the driving on the left business).

Tea was lovely — will write that up in more detail for TeaWritings.com — and then I went off the the London Stone pub for a Harry Potter fan meetup! One fellow who did not think he would be able to make it to the con called a pub meet so he could at least catch up with some folks while they were in town. I ended up staying until the pub closed and they kicked us out, chatting with some new folks I'd not had a chance to catch up with at the con, several of whom I have known for a long time on LiveJournal but had not yet met. Lots of folks from the con committee as well. Oh I shall miss these folks and wish I could come back for Halloween!

Back at the King's Cross hotel, I got a nearly full night's sleep, then rushed off to my second (and last) full day of sight-seeing. I went straight to the Tower of London and from there straight to the Crown Jewels. There was a long queue to enter the Jewel House, but not nearly as long as when I looked later, so I'm glad I did it straightaway. They have Disney-style queueing, where much of the crisscrossing takes you through dimly lit rooms while multimedia screens inform and entertain. In one room you see footage of Elizabeth's coronation, in another facts about the named gems in the crown and sceptre (sic), and so on. You pass by cases full of ceremonial swords and trumpets. And then you come to the crowns themselves, where you stand on a conveyor belt people mover, so that you cannot just stand and stare. This is smart because even the fairly jaded like myself would have just stood there and stared. You can go back around to ride the people mover multiple times (one running on either side of the cases) but that keeps it moving. It was worth making the trip to see, and I couldn't help but think how there is this current craze among steampunks for tiny top hats — the style appears to have an actual precedent as Queen Victoria had a miniature diamond crown made that she wore quite often. That was one of the crowns on display.

Anyway, yes, very impressive.

In another building of the Tower one can see the former crowns out of which the jewels have been removed and re-set into the new ones, leaving a kind of honeycombed shell of gold.

Another exhibition that seems to be a temporary one includes armor from various kings, including a lot of pieces from Henry the VII. This is also very impressive stuff, not replicas but the actual suits of armor. It's somewhat amusing to see that as Henry grew older, the shape of his belly is reflected in the ever-rounder shape of his breastplates. Also, the larger his belly got, the larger the accompanying codpiece. The armor was more impressive to me than the swords, which I know, isn't like me at all. Also in the collection are gifts of arms and armor from other kingdoms and rulers, including an impressive set of lacquer samurai armor from Japan that was given in the 1600s.

Overall, the Tower was well worth a visit and the people-watching was also terrific. I don't know why, but I find tourists making a spectacle of themselves with their touristy-ness to be amusing. At the Tower thy have various guards stationed here and there like they do at Buckingham Palace — the stoic guys with the tall furry hats. And one of these fellows would be standing at his post, or two of them would be marching along in unison, and people would be falling all over themselves to take photographs of this. I overheard a woman from Finland in the loo telling a friend what it was like, later, and I think she hits the nail on the head for a lot of folks. "it's like something out of a storybook, isn't it? The fairytales are like come to life and you just have to take a picture because it's right there in front of you."

Well, okay, I don't quite have the Prince Charming reaction to a generic royal guard, but I can certainly agree generally with the sentiment. So speaks the woman who went looking for Platform 9 3/4 not once, not twice, but three times. You already know about the first time, when I found the construction sign. I went looking again after getting back from dinner on that night only to find it DISAPPEARED. That's right, no sign, no trolley, nothing. I was certain I was in the same place where the people had been taking photographs the night before, but now there was no indication anything had been there. But, well, it's PLatform 9 3/4. It seems fitting it just disappears, no?

This morning on my way to Heathrow I went and looked one more time. And this time there was a sign saying "Platform 9 3/4 Has Been Moved," and pointing to another spot where it will be until the renovations are completed, when it can finally be moved back to where it actually belongs, on a column between platforms 9 and 10.

When I was finished at the Tower of London I tried briefly to find the Brahmas Tea Museum, because I had seen a sign for it at the Underground station, but according to the website, which I was able to pull up on my mobile, the museum closed "for renovations" some time ago. The website said "will reopen in 2009″ but when I called the phone number, it appeared to be disconnected.

Instead, I went up to the Sir John Soanes museum. Soanes was a noted architect of his day who designed many significant buildings in London and for the government, and a collector of antiquities. As such the house, which is a brownstone facing Lincoln Park, is choc-a-block with statuary and archeological fragments as well as many paintings of Hogarth. They only allow 65 people in the house at a time, and no large bags or backpacks, as sometimes one has to negotiate narrow spaces between things to get around. The centerpiece of the collection is an Egyptian sarcophagus made entirely from a single piece of limestone that an Egyptologist friend of Soanes brought back to England and offered to the British Museum for 2,000 pounds, only to be turned down. So Soanes bought it and had three nights of gala parties to show it off, renting 300 oil lamps for the occasion.

Being an architect, Soanes designed various elements of his own house, including the placement of stained glass, skylights, and mirrors to spread light and color throughout the house. Overall, a very delightful place to visit. There is an MP3 audio tour free online that one can download but I didn't bother.

Then I headed up to Piccadilly Circus where I would be meeting my cousin Chrissie (she's a second great-cousin or something like that… on the Welsh side of the family) and her S.O. for dinner. I had some time to kill so I thought I would check my email and get a cup of tea. I eschewed Starbucks in favor of the "Internet Cafe" with "Free WIFI" inside Cool Britannia, a kind of tourist-trap store that sells just about anything you can imagine with the Union Jack emblazoned on it. Imagine an Urban Outfitters but with everything UK-phernalia and you have some idea what I mean. Unfortunately, the WiFi in the cafe did not work and the waitress complained to me that it has NEVER worked since they built the cafe in the basement. By the time I discovered that, I had already gotten a cup of tea, though, so I sat down and read the Evening Standard and did a little writing instead. Irksome advertisements would come on from time to time on the Cool Brittania "radio" playing, touting the free Wifi in the cafe.

Ooh, just looked out the window of the plane and can see land for the first time in a while. At any rate, my UK adventure tale is nearly done. I had a delightful dinner at Zilli Fish, which is chef Aldo Zilli's seafood restaurant, where in addition to the regular menu there is a two-course set menu for a mere 11.90, three-course for 15.90, which was a very reasonable price for the quality of the food. We walked off dinner with a wander past Trafalgar Square down Whitehall street to see #10 Downing Street and such, ending again by the boat docks. The Eye was lit up, as were the houses of parliament, and crowds of people were walking about.

From there, it was back into the tube and back to the hotel to pack up and get ready to leave in the morning. I had one more English Breakfast at the hotel in the morning and then off to Heathrow I went. I managed to spend all the cash in my pockets except for about 2.50, managed to use all but about 2.50 on my Oyster Card, but I never got through most of the money I'd put on my mobile phone when I arrived, so about 10 pounds will probably go to waste. (I don't think it'll work in Iceland…)

We land in Reykjavik in about an hour, I think, and then the final leg of the journey begins. I'm thinking I may do a whale watch cruise to the puffin island, and I definitely want to soak in a hot spring. And eat. Beyond that, we shall see.

Diacon Alley Diary #1

Bah, NeoOffice just crashed and ate a long journal entry I wrote in Keflavic airport. Short version: Icelandic apricot yogurt is really yummy. I'm meeting Francie in a few hours and we're taking the train from London to Canterbury. More later.

OK, I'm jetlagged and not at my most coherent, but here's a bit more of what I think I was writing about Iceland. Besides about the yogurt with the texture of silken tofu. IcelandAir is a charming, quirky airline for a charming, quirky country. The in-flight entertainment includes documentaries about how charming and quirky the country is.

I'll write more about Iceland later… when I actually stay there. This morning is was just in and out, and on to London.

16:02 Now on the train to Canterbury! I arrived in London without incident. Activated my UK (borrowed) phone with a SIM card from a vending machine. Something rather Neal Stephenson about that…

First meal in London? Same as my first meal in Nagasaki. Takoyaki! (Fried octopus balls.) I know, I should have looked for a cornish pastie stand or something, but when I saw conveyor belt sushi in St. Pancras Station, I went for it. Green tea, miso, and rice are very restorative. Not to mention lots of salmon. I have no idea what the end price was: they charge by color-coded plate. I used my VISA card.

I had no trouble hooking up with Francie and Annie. Annie was sitting right at the top of the escalator when I went to find the proper train platform, and Francie came up shortly thereafter.

Speaking of looking for train platforms, I went looking for Platform 9 3/4. King's Cross Station is under a huge construction project, though, at the moment, and I couldn't find it. I did find a sign instructing construction workers to enter the worksite, though, "at Harry Potter."

My impression of London so far is it's a lot like Chicago but full of British people.

The train is now speeding through the countryside. The weather's gray, but it hardly matters. I just hope not to get soaked while trying to get to the hostel, though.

Draco wants to go to Wiltshire. I've told him to shut it.

22:05 Back at the hostel after dinner. We arrived here without incident, and then Francie, Debbie (another HP pal), and I went walking about the town. Not unexpectedly, Canterbury is very nice. Very old buildings in a medieval town with beautiful deep canals, hidden gardens, and cobblestoned streets. We wandered into a sweets shoppe, but most of the shops were closed by the time we were exploring. We saw a mama duck with ten (TEN!) very tiny baby ducks! And we saw a baby coot! The baby coot looks exactly like a big coot except smaller than a chicken egg.

Met up for dinner at a tapas place with , , , , , , , and I'm already forgetting who else… There was much discussion of how the comics industry ignores the female audience, things JK Rowling got wrong, the usual.

Tomorrow we plan to take in the Roman Museum and then in the afternoon we check into the dormitory at the university, and the con starts for real!

St. Cecilia of Slytherin (My review of the DH 2 movie)

So I saw DH2 the other night in a midnight showing, at the Boston Common theater. The Boston Globe was there covering the event, as there were thousands of people there, many in costume, myself included. I had decided to wear my Slytherin tie.

Now, those of you who have known me for a while know I've identified as a Ravenclaw for years and years. Heck, my LJ default icon even says it. Haha! Even the name "Ravenna" is a reference to it! But?

But. I have to ask myself, if I'm such a Ravenclaw, why do I even OWN a green and silver tie? I picked it up second-hand for $1 and at the time I thought someone else might want it someday. But I wore it.

A Boston Globe reporter came up to me. "And which character are you?" she chirped.

"I'm just a generic Slytherin," I answered. "In fact, I'm coming out as a Slytherin today."

"You are?" She looked surprised. "But aren't the Slytherins the bad guys that everyone hates?"

"Yes," I said. "The Slytherins are the New York Yankees of the wizarding world. Everyone hates them because they're the best."

So here you have it, my coming out photo, which appeared on the front page of Boston.com the next morning!

I had no idea why the photographer who was taking the shot for the paper asked me to move a little to the side. Apparently it was to capture the light streaks behind me to make what Francie called "St. Cecilia of Slytherin."

A little while later, I tweeted: It all ends tonight! I used to be a ravenclaw. Technically I'm a Slytherclaw. But JK Rowling you are done kicking Slytherin around!! Green & silver REPRESENT!

As is my fate in life, I can never fit into a single box. Life of a bisexual, half-blood (in the Muggle sense), switch with gender identification issues. Heh.

Anyway, this meant I had a great time even before the movie started. There were people there dressed as Nagini, as the Golden Snitch with "I open at the close" painted on their skin, some Rita Skeeters, some Trelawneys, and lots and lots and lots of Hogwarts students. Mostly Gryffindor, of course, but plenty of the other three houses as well. And lots and lots of Quidditch players! I mean real actual Quidditch teams from the local colleges who came in their uniforms (T-shirts mostly) carrying their brooms!

And then came the movie. My review follows. Stop reading now if you don't want any spoilers.

First off, I loved it. Not as much as I loved movie 6, but as a Draco fan, of course I loved movie 6 the most. But this film does not stand alone–and it is not supposed to. It truly is the second half of the whole.

When the previews ended, in the entire theater I was in, it felt like the crowd was holding its breath, waiting to cheer the opening title card. In all the previous midnight premieres I've been to, a huge cheer erupted the moment the WB logo appeared. But the filmmakers pulled a change-up on us, opening with a dark image of Voldemort. The entire theater was eerily silent, breaths caught in our throats. I felt plunged right in. I'm getting goosebumps just describing it.

In literature you can leave some questions unanswered and open to interpretation. In a Hollywood film, you can't. In a book you can meander around trying to get your plot together. In a film you have to take the most direct path. And in a book you can concern yourself chiefly with a single character's arc of development. In an ensemble cast like this one, though, in a film, you have to ensure everyone gets a moment.

In this way the main ways the final three films, 6, 7, and 8, differ from the books are in answering questions that were left unanswered in the canon, stripping away the fat from the plot, and closing the character arcs of multiple characters and relationships that were left unconsidered or merely hinted at in the books.

In particular, the filmmakers went a lot further toward understanding Draco in a way that I don't think Rowling ever did.

I've been critical in the past of some of the deviations the films have made from the books, like the non0sensical and useless burn-down-the-Burrow scene. But I accept and embrace the fact that movies are a different medium with different needs from books. I've also been critical in the past of how I feel the books have some flaws. Most of those flaws involve Rowling leaving questions unanswered or unexplained, or having explanations that make no sense. Small example: You have to speak Parseltongue to get into the Chamber of Secrets. In the book, Ron fakes his way through it and it works, claiming he tried to imitate what Harry did when he opened the locket earlier in the book. Kinda far-fetched. In the film they at least give it slightly more credibility in that Ron says Harry talks in his sleep, making it something he's been hearing for years and years, not just once.

By far the most significant deviation in the DH2 movie, though, is the revamp of the confrontation between Harry and Draco in the Room of Hidden Things. The film-makers remove the muddy, confusing confrontation in the book, in which Crabbe and Goyle do most of the talking, it's unclear what Draco's motivations are and who's idea it was to try to catch Harry there, et cetera, and replace it with a more direct exchange between Harry and Draco. In which Harry comes right out and asks Draco why he didn't identify him to Bellatrix and Lucius when they were captured at Malfoy Manor.

In the book we never have any indication at all that Harry even considers the fact that Draco saves his skin there. It's like he doesn't even notice. After the intense antagonism between these two character in book 6 (Harry nearly kills Draco, recall…) you'd think Harry might be at least apprehensive that Draco is going to turn him in, and when he doesn't, you'd think Harry might be relieved, or curious about what made Draco do it. There are a ton of things that Harry might think at the time, or later, but we never get any of them in the book, even in this confrontation scene which is the next time they see each other.

The filmmakers cannot delve into what Harry is thinking, either, but they at least acknowledge the significance of the moment and that Harry MUST consider what Draco did means SOMETHING. So Harry asks him why he did it.

We still don't find out the answer, as all hell breaks loose before Draco can answer. But I suppose that's OK. I was pleased enough with the nod to the necessary scene without going so far that the film would have to create something more. This is a direct descendant of the changes made in movie 6. In Half-Blood Prince, Harry spends much of the book obsessing over whether Draco is marked or not. This question is never answered in the books, but in the film the revelation of Draco's mark is used as a climax moment.

Another change, the Malfoys separating themselves from everyone at the end of the film. Lo and behold, there's Draco on the "good guys" side. Hmm? However, at this point Narcissa (and possibly Lucius) know that Harry is actually alive and that it's time to cut bait. Narcissa's insistence that Draco join them is laden with meaning, and Draco doesn't miss that she is telling him something is going on. The smirks on her and Lucius's faces as they stand behind Voldemort are also priceless. And then the three of them get the hell out of Dodge before anything else can go wrong.

Somehow I found Voldemort killing Snape for mastery of the Elder Wand more convincing in the film, as well. The reason he gives is the same, but somehow the way the scene unfolded felt more convincing to me. I just re-read it in the book, and it feels to me like the book version is a first draft, the film version a revision.

Given that Rowling herself is a producer of the film and supposedly had script approval, I am starting to feel that these last few films in particular *are* revisions. They do not "change" the canon for me, but they show how differently a revision of the manuscript might have gone. (If you've ever seen the early drafts of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald you know how drastically a great work of literature can change… thanks to Cosmin for reminding me of Gatsby as one of the rather more striking examples of such…) If anything this opens the door for me, a fanfic writer, to make my own renovations and changes in my own interpretations of the story and characters.

More movie stuff: when Neville is dragging the sword toward confronting Voldemort at the end, I realllly though he was going to pull an Inigo Montoya and say: "My name is Neville Longbottom. You killed my parents. Prepare to die."

(ok ok, i know they're technically not dead, but I still thought it…!)

Helena Bonham Carter pretending to be Hermione pretending to be Bellatrix was brilliant.

The Snape flashback scenes are heartbreaking. Probably moreso if you're a Snape/Lily shipper. I'm not and they were still incredibly powerful. If anything, though, I didn't feel a grand tug of romance there, more the tragic feeling that she was the only light in his world, his only friend, and boyhood crush, meaning that once she was killed he was trapped in an emotional state unable to ever move on or mature. Somehow this came through to me on the screen in a way I had not felt it in the book. My only regret about Alan Rickman playing Snape is that he is indeed too old to pull off the young Snape scenes completely. I'm good at suspending disbelief, though, so it hardly mattered. But I'm sure the filmmakers would have loved a de-aging potion.

One cute note, during AMC's "First Look" propaganda they show before the actual previews, they showed a snippet from the original screen test with Daniel, Emma, and Rupert, and OMG so tiny and young they were.

At some point now, perhaps around Christmas when I have a feeling it's likely some kind of massive box set of the DVDs will be coming out (ya think?), I'll have to watch all the films back to back. (perhaps over the course of a weekend).

Meanwhile I get to see DH2 again this coming week! At Diacon Alley! Cannot wait to see it again!

Should I bring books to sell/sign to Diacon Alley?

It occurs to me some folks at Diacon Alley might be interested in signed copies of some of my books. I understand the books are harder to get in the UK than the US (or at least usually more expensive) and my signature, well, you can't get that from Amazon. :-)

I won't have a heck of a lot of room in my luggage, but if you think you might want any of the following, please tell me, and I'll try to pack accordingly! (i.e. please tell me your level of interest: yes for sure, pretty sure, maybe if I have the money, etc.)

I'll take US cash or pounds or Euros, with prices as marked below.

The Prince's Boy, vol 1 paperback

(US$20, call it 13 pounds, 14 Euro)

Magic U Book 1: The Siren & the Sword

(US$13, 9 pounds, 9 Euro)

Magic U Book 2: The Tower and the Tears

(US$13, 9 pounds, 9 Euro)

The rest of my books are all digital right now.

Harry Potter Tarot Fest Claiming Starts Friday!

That's right, claims will open on this Friday for the Potterverse Tarot Fest, which will be run on Livejournal, InsaneJournal, and Dreamwidth… that is, if I can get someone experienced in the ways of DW to handle the crossposting there for me? (I had one volunteer, but she hasn't answered email or pings since her initial "I'll do it" so I need someone else ASAP or that mirror won't happen.)

Just paste the code below into your own blog or journal to pimp the fest with our beautiful banner, made by Venturous!

The HP Tarot Fest will be mirrored on IJ and DW,
but the claiming post will be on LJ only to prevent duplicate claims.
Anon comments may be used for those without LJ accounts.