Chris Baty's Blog, page 266

A Day in the (Work) Life of… Dan Duvall

First off, I want to congratulate writerbean for giving us the most GUMPO for Blobby's "Day in the (Work) Life of…" post.  

If this isn't GUMPO, then I don't know what is:

GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO! GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO! GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO! GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO! GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO! GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO! GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO! GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO GUMPO!

That's 72 GUMPOS, folks. Blobby likes!

For the next installation of "Day in the (Work) Life," we'll get to know more about our Tech hero Dan Duvall.

Things I know about Dan:

He often eats pie for breakfast.
He's tall.
He's an insanely organized and detail-oriented IT manager.
He just got a hip new bike.
He is an excellent dancer.
He has two screens: one with normal stuff on it and another that has a bunch of DOS-looking gobbledygook on it.
He has a desk that can be either a sitting desk or a standing desk.
He comes up with the best metaphors to explain complicated techy concepts to staff.
He is an excellent singer.
One time, he shaved his beard.
Oh, and he may or may not play the keyboard.

What I don't know is exactly what Dan does during a given day while sitting (or standing) at his desk.

First off, do you play the keyboard? If so, what is your favorite song to play? If not, why in the world would I possibly think that?

I do play, mostly jazz, though never often enough and never well enough. The song I play most is definitely "Blue In Green" by Bill Evans. When I was growing up, "Kind of Blue," of which "Blue in Green" is the third track, was my introduction to jazz, and probably my first love.

We met at a Borders, in the cultural hub of San Ramon, California where the diametric flavors of Baja Fresh and Bagel Street Cafe are so sharply juxtaposed. After a quick get-to-know-ya among fleets of overt and ostentatious box sets, and an awkward exchange with an assuming cashier, we were both eager to get comfortable in my parked car, where cellophane and naïveté fell away in candor and quick succession. Anyway, you get the point and this is kinda silly.

I love that track, and used to fall asleep to it every night for the better part of a teenaged year. It encapsulates a time in my life that seemed hopelessly lonely and renders it rich and meaningful.

Secondly, what's with the two screens? How do they work? What's on the DOS-looking one? Perhaps you can explain this magical screen using one of your amazing extended metaphors.

Having two screens is the bee's knees! And highly addictive! It lets me see so many things at once without having to tab through a stack of windows all the time.

I use my larger display for my front-and-center applications like Mail, Safari, MacVim, Excel, and once in a blue moon, this Word thing. MacVim, my text dominator, is where I spend most of my time coding, writing tests, or slaying random search-and-replace encounters.

However, the engineering of applications doesn't simply entail writing code. It also requires, among other things, frequent execution of tests, running of scripts, manipulation of directories and files, and deployment to servers. All of these tasks, and my sys-admin tasks, are most easily accomplished, for Unix geeks such as myself, with (DOS-looking) command-line shells! My terminal of choice is iTerm—it was the first to have OpenGL acceleration (what, what!)—and my shell of choice is Bash. Their playpen is my laptop screen.

These "little black boxes," as a friend used to call them, are especially powerful when tackling simple but repetitive tasks. Imagine someone has instructed you to move a giant pile of rocks from one side of the yard to the other for no pragmatic reason—hey Dad, you're probably not reading this but I'd like to concede that it did build character. Now imagine that you were given the ability to use a computer to do it, but you must choose between a graphical interface (GUI) and a command-line interface (a shell). With the GUI, it's still manual labor: click shovel, click pile alpha, click wheelbarrow, click pile bravo, click, click, click… (drink Mom's lemonade, feign illness, return to pile). With the shell, you would just think about the task for a moment, and hammer out something like this:

"(while there are rocks; do throw rocks; done) < big_pile_o_rocks > somehow_bigger_pile_o_rocks_wtf"

Blam-o.

What types of IT tasks do you like to do while eating your pie in the morning?

So many things can be done while eating pie. Why restrict it to IT work, or work in general? I like to think about the next time I will eat pie.

Where did you learn all your amazing dance moves?

I don't consider them all that amazing. I'm just hopelessly goofy and I try to keep it real—even when it goes wrong. The most important thing is to let loose and plant your flailing extremities somewhere on the beat; the downbeat is preferable. When you've got that down, try some hip/torso flares and some leg kicks. Now you're doing the G.I. Joe®.

Are there tasks that you like to do while standing at your desk opposed to sitting at it?

There's a lot more shuffling of feet when I'm standing, slightly more nervous file saving, and definitely fewer outbursts of gibberish. I have no idea why this is, really. To be perfectly honest, I think I'm less productive when standing, but my back feels so much better!

Finally, is there anything on your desk that you'd be willing to give away to our blog followers? If so, how could one win this amazing prize?

Oh no! I hate parting with toys! Well, let's see… I can't give up Bubba, my succulent. How about Tangerine Ninja? He makes me nervous anyway, always offering to "relieve" me of my "head weight," whatever that means. Tangerine Ninja goes to the comment with the best dance move description involving food or the digestive process.

Good luck!

"I sold my NaNoWriMo novel!" A Q&A with Rachael Herron

In March of last year, Chris Baty interviewed NaNoWrimo participant and published author Rachael Herron about her NaNo-novel, How to Knit a Love Song, published by HarperCollins. This March, a follow-up to that novel, How to Knit a Heart Back Home, hit the bookshelves. We were lucky enough to snag a moment of Rachael's time for a check-in about her latest novel and insights on writing—and revising—her NaNoWriMo manuscripts.

Rachael, can you tell us a little bit about How to Knit a Heart Back Home?

Lucy never forgot the kiss or the bad boy she shared it with. Now, 17 years later, he's back—and, dammit, he's still sexy as hell. As owner of The Book Spire in the sleepy town of Cypress Hollow, Lucy Harrison isn't used to too much excitement. But in one night all that changes when Owen Bancroft walks back into her life and sparks—quite literally—fly. The question is, does he even remember their one perfect kiss? And does she really want him to? Then, when a secret stash of books and lost patterns by world-famous knitting guru Eliza Carpenter are discovered in the Bancroft family home, the pair are thrown together once more. There's no denying the electricity between them—but this time will black sheep Owen prove to be heart-stealer or heart-breaker?

When you wrote How to Knit a Love Song, did you already know you'd be following it up with this story?

Nope! I had no idea. I wrote the first book as my first NaNo attempt in 2006, and in my mind it was a one-off. (And a miracle—it was the first time I'd ever finished a full novel.) When it sold as part of a three-book deal, I was thrilled to go back into Cypress Hollow and dig up more characters for me to play with, but it definitely wasn't planned that way.

How was the writing and revision process different this time around?

The writing of the second book was hard, but I wrote it in November, so I was powering through it. I finished the draft a few months later, and then I realized that the book I'd written under contract wasn't what I needed it to be (talk about stress!). I panicked. I rewrote it twice, changing it from a romantic suspense novel, to a mystery, to a romantic comedy. And after all that, my editor read it, and told me that my writing was great, but I needed more plot. (No! The characters totally argued! They got really, really mad… Oh, wait. I needed more plot.) So I started another ground-up revision, and this was the one that finally took. It was back-breaking labor, nothing like the revisions I'd done for the first book. It was the dreaded Book Two Blues, and I was hit hard. But I'm proud to say that I love this book in its final incarnation, and it's received great reviews, so I'm very pleased.

Do you have any new insights to share with our participants about getting from first draft to final draft?

I'm thrilled to say that by the end of this year, I'll have four books in the stores (three novels with HarperCollins and one memoir with Chronicle Books), so I've got a bit of a better handle on it now (I hope). The first draft always will and should be total crap, nothing more than that. Revision is the true magic of writing. My ideal path would be four drafts: the first terrible one, the shaping one, the reshaping one, and the final clean-up draft, where sentences become lovely. (Doesn't that sound great? I've managed it on the last two books, and I'm terrified that I'll forget how to do it. Each book is its own new beast, with its own set of prickly defense mechanisms, so I approach all of them cautiously, pepper spray in hand.)

What comes next for the Cypress Hollow series?

There is plotting going on in my little town! Much plotting. :) Also, and this is weirdly cool, in the ways things work in this surprising world, a reader actually recently dyed yarn to match the CHARACTERS of my little fictional town. The overarching (deceased) character is cream, Lucy is a pale purple, Whitney is pure pink… They're all exactly as I would have imagined, in yarn. And I never saw THAT one coming. And it's awesome.

That is so awesome. Any plans for NaNoWriMo 2011?

So many. But I'll only say these three words: Maori. Football. Team.

Very intriguing! And what is your current knitting project? 

I made a wedding shawl as a prototype for the third book's pattern, WISHES AND STITCHES, and as soon as I cast on for it, my agent and friend got engaged. So I recently sent that shawl off to her with many good wishes knitted into it, and I'm starting a red one of my own.

Thank you so much! It's always an honor hanging out with the NaNoBunch.

30 Posters, 30 Days: Recap

We made it to the end of another Script Frenzy! And for the first time in our five-year history, we ran 30 Posters, 30 Days. Here's a quick snapshot of all the posters from this month, and you can see them in closer detail here. Thanks to everyone who submitted a script (we received over 600 nominations!) and a big thanks to all of our designers who so generously donated their time and created 30 amazing posters.

With the help of John Gall, we'll be back in design action this November with 30 Covers, 30 Days for NaNoWriMo! Until then, keep your eye out for good design, and start thinking about your NaNo plot!

"I sold my NaNoWriMo novel!" A Q&A with Kim Brittingham

Kim is a three-time NaNoWriMo participant. She sold her book, Read my Hips: How I Learned to Love My Body, Ditch Dieting, and Live Large to Random House. The book hits shelves on May 3, and Kim took some time out of her busy schedule to talk with us about her experience.

Kim, can you tell us a little bit about Read My Hips?

Sure! Read My Hips is a memoir. It's a peek into my experience as a girl growing up in the United States, and how our cultural obsession with thinness affected the kind of woman I've become. I realize I'm biased, but I truly think every girl and woman living in the United States and its western-influenced neighbors needs to read Read My Hips. We're exposed to such relentless corporate-sponsored messages on a routine basis, urging us to spend our money to fix what's "wrong" with us. We desperately need another perspective if we're going to have a female population capable of sustaining authentic happiness and living full, satisfying lives.

I'm making Read My Hips sound like some heavy-handed sociopolitical book, but it's not—it's a collection of personal stories. Some are funny, some are tear-jerkers. But they're experiences that will resonate with every woman who grew up in this country. Read My Hips lends a perspective on body-image issues that's very different from what we're used to hearing in the media, and it's sorely needed.

So you're a NaNo rebel! Do you think writing a nonfiction book during NaNoWriMo is very different from writing a novel? If so, how?

Yes, it was very different. The first two times I did NaNo, I worked on fiction, and I was truly making it up as I went along. I didn't even go into NaNo with a vague outline. The first time, I'd just read No Plot? No Problem! and was tentatively trying out NaNo and didn't really know what to expect, so I definitely didn't plan ahead. I really did just hit the keyboard running, so to speak. The second time I wanted to prove to myself I could finish NaNo more than once, and again, there was no plan, not even an inkling of a plot or characters.

Both times, there was not only the challenge of maintaining a certain level of productivity, but also the pressure of having to make things up. You'd think that would be easy-peasy for a lifelong daydreamer like me, but it wasn't. I didn't want to think too hard because I feared I'd lose my momentum and never get to 50,000 words. But at the same time, creating fiction from scratch requires thought. So when I used NaNo to work on nonfiction, I found it much easier. Rather than sitting there trying to come up with character traits or what a character will do next, I was really just reporting things from memory and tapping into what I was feeling in the past. Way less brain pain.

What was your writing schedule like during November?

Writing was the first thing I did when I got home from work each night. I popped open a can of soda, collapsed into my desk chair and started typing. I also wrote all weekend, starting in the morning and basically typing until I couldn't stand it anymore. I remember typing late into the night quite a few times, too.

How complete was your book by the end of the event?

I'd say I had about one-third of a very rough draft to work with.

What was process of shopping your book like?

At the risk of sounding like a total goofball, I have to say it was magical. I've wanted to be an author since I was a kid. As soon as I was old enough to write complete sentences, I was writing creatively. I used to write stories and staple them together into booklets and illustrate them with crayons and colored pencils. And I remember being in fifth or sixth grade, and an author named Doris Buchanan Smith came to my school. We'd read her book A Taste of Blackberries as part of our English class. She signed my copy, and I decided that day that I would grow up to write books just like her. I remember having daydreams about walking into my publisher's building, and it was a New York City skyscraper with a lobby that was at least three stories tall, with the publishing company's name across the back wall in giant letters. I imagined a huge showcase on the wall with books displayed behind glass.

And years later, the day my agent took me to meet the editor who would eventually work on Read My Hips, the building looked just like the building in my fantasy. RANDOM HOUSE was spelled out against the lobby wall and yes, there was a giant showcase filled with books! I almost couldn't believe it.

But anyway, that's probably not what you were asking. Shopping my book was far easier than I expected. I'd been learning everything I could about publishing for a few years already. I'd taken a lot of classes and workshops and read a lot of books, so I knew I would need a book proposal. I knew what was supposed to be in that proposal, and I felt like it was going to take a year just to write the proposal. I was in the midst of working on one when my agent e-mailed me and introduced herself. When she asked if I had a book in the works, I remember feeling lame that I had to admit my book proposal was only halfway done. My agent helped me whip it into shape in just a couple of days, which blew my mind.

After that, the shopping process was mostly about waiting. She faxed the proposal to some editors, and I got one offer the next day, which I couldn't believe. Boom, just like that! After that, we went to meet other interested publishers in person (hence the magical visit to the Random House building), and before I knew it, I had a book deal. Pretty amazing, actually.

How did you find out about NaNoWriMo?

I read Chris Baty's book, No Plot? No Problem!. I was browsing the writing section in the bookstore when it caught my eye on the shelf. For such a little book, it made a giant impact on my writing habits and my life.

Do you have any revision wisdom to share with participants who are editing their NaNo-novels?

Revision is probably what I do worst, but there are a couple of important things I learned during the process of writing and revising Read My Hips. First, I got really good at letting go. What I mean is, I no longer have any qualms about ripping out entire paragraphs of prose and trashing them without ever looking back—if it's truly for the greater good of the piece. I used to be one of those writers who ached over cutting sections or sentences I particularly liked. I think most writers go through that. Somebody suggests to you that you're wandering off-topic and you should cut that singularly brilliant paragraph and suddenly you feel like one of those people on Hoarders who's being asked to part with their favorite childhood squeaky toy. Noooooo!

But I'll tell you what—with practice, you can get really good at being impersonal with your own writing, and I think it's an important skill to develop if you want to be productive and be the best possible writer. You learn to look more wholly at a piece. You sense when something doesn't belong, and no matter how poetic and heartbreakingly beautiful it may be, you're OK deleting it. After all, if something's really that adorable, you can always recycle it in something else—another story, a poem, whatever. The words don't have to go away forever. And when you consider that keeping words in where they don't belong may actually bring down the quality of the piece you're working on, it gets easier to start slashing. Besides, you have to think of your reader, which brings me to my second piece of revision advice: keep your reader in the back of your mind when you're revising, and be considerate to him or her.

I recently took a writing class in which this other student, a woman in her early 60s, was resistant to any feedback suggesting any kind of change to her work. Makes you wonder why she even bothered taking the class if she thought her work was already perfect, you know? Anyway, one day I had to give feedback on her essay, and I told her that, as a reader, I found myself wanting to know where the action was taking place geographically. I wanted some hint about what state she was in while the action was taking place, maybe even what time of the year it was. I just felt the need for some small details that would help me establish, in my mind, when and where we were.

Well, the student got irate, saying that she'd already dropped some cultural clues—but none of them meant anything to the other students in our feedback circle. They were almost like private jokes between the writer and… herself. It reinforced for me the importance of being gracious towards your reader. You want to make it easy for them to leave their own time and place and disappear into the world you've written, whether it's nonfiction from some moment in history, or a completely fabricated, fictitious world. There are ways for you as a writer to make that transition as painless as possible. But when you completely ignore your reader and make things potentially clumsy for anyone outside your own head, you're being self-indulgent.

Of course, that's not a problem if you're writing something only you plan to read. But if you plan to write for readers other than yourself, be a considerate writer.  

Do you have any plans for NaNoWriMo 2011?

I would love to do NaNo in 2011! I'm about to start working on my second book, a young adult novel. Yes, fiction! So it would be great to use NaNo as a tool for making big progress in my manuscript. This time, though, I'll have a better idea where I'm going. Hopefully that won't end up being problematic!

30 Posters, 30 Days: Day 30

Nate Duval designed this poster in 24 hours:

Dave Wilson, a film by mattferrett

Logline: Workaday loser Dave Wilson embarks on a bizarre journey when his hometown is invaded by a horde of himself from countless parallel dimensions.

Dave Wilsons from different dimensions can vary from near-exact lookalikes, to bizarre non-humans from wildly different universes. Our workaday loser Dave Wilson is guided by a brilliant inventor Dave Wilson, hoping to stop a ruthless madman, dictator Dave Wilson.

The power-hungry dictator Dave Wilson (dubbing himself "Dave Wilson Prime") plans to mate with a female Dave Wilson… a cross-dimensional paradox which will result in the creation of a parallel universe of nothing but Dave Wilsons. D.W. Prime plans to enslave that universe of Daves as a personal army to conquer the multiverse.

Our two hero Daves must cross dimensions and recruit as many Daves as possible to stop DW Prime before it's too late. Their motley crew includes Plant Dave Wilson, Dave Wilsonasaurus Rex, Mecha-Dave Wilson, and Octo-Dave Wilson.

Nate Duval is an illustrator, printmaker, and designer living outside of Boston, MA. His client list includes Nike, Sierra Nevada, Phish, Iron & Wine, Blue Q, Sweet 'N Low, and many others. nateduval.com

Scriptwriting in the Emerald City

Dawn is the Script Frenzy Municipal Liaison for Seattle. She's participated in NaNoWriMo since 2009 and Script Frenzy since 2010. A self proclaimed vagabond writer, she also enjoys swing sets, s'mores, writing six-word memoirs, and dancing on the streets. Her goal is to complete both challenges every year until 2014… or until the rapture.

How do you get participants writing?

Well for my weekly write-in participants, I hold space for a little problem-solving in the breaks. At our very first meeting, I taught people about lowliness and encouraged everyone to write on it for five minutes. Then we introduced ourselves and our projects. Each week I ask about issues any writer wants to discuss with the group. This is to encourage writers to discuss the parts they are stuck on and get some perspective on the block.

Writers love helping other writers as it's another great way to avoid writing your own script. Except I am there and encourage them after the allotted break time to get back to writing. We usually do two dedicated blocks of 40 minutes with socializing during the breaks. I have come to love the sheepish look I get as I herd people back to their computers. We are a pretty consistent group of four to seven writers each week, and hearing all about their projects inspires me—from graphic novels, to TV spec scripts, to stage, our group is very diverse. I feel honored to be able to write with and see the growth of such fascinating writers.

What's the most exciting thing you've planned for this April?

My passion is emerging marketing and social media so I am trying out tweet-ups! We have lots of writers in a spread-out area, I thought this would be a good way for people to socialize if they can't make real life write-ins. We have a tweet-up every Monday night from 8-9 PM PST (but we like out-of-town visitors!). You can follow our tweet-up without a Twitter account here, or participate using the hashtag #seafrenzy.

Finally, what kind of script are you writing? What's it about?

I am writing about one woman's adventure after the Rapture, discovering how to grieve the "chosen" while grappling with dating demons and angels now on earth.

Rom-Com!

This "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster hangs above my desk, but as you can see, I've had to renovate it a bit because… I'm engaged!

The juicy details: I flew to Palm Springs straight from work to meet up with my fiancé (owing to my lackluster French, I had to look that up just now—I am the fiancée!) for Easter weekend. He picked me up from the airport, had dinner all set and then wham!, he took a knee. It was romantic, it was beautiful, we were both exactly the opposite of cool, and I'm still giddy!

It wasn't until hours later that I realized all of this happened while I was wearing a Script Frenzy shirt!

I've never been the type of girl to dream about her proposal but had I been, I seriously doubt I would have been wearing a Script Frenzy shirt in that fantasy (no matter how much I love our merch!). It makes sense that I was, though, because the Office of Letters and Light has been a huge part of our lives. My fiancé was also an Office of Letters and Light Captain—Shipping Captain! You can see pictures of him and his sideburns taken during his tenure as Shipping Captain here. He's in squares 5, 25, 26, 51, and 53. (Do I sometimes take a detour through the Store when I'm missing him? Guess! Whether he's still shipping or not, he remains the Captain of my heart.)

This has been my Rom-Com moment! I'd love to hear yours, taken from your characters' lives or your own! Did nerves overcome cool? Did plans go awry? And did romance prevail anyway? Also, which of our shirts should I wear on the wedding day itself? I'm thinking a Winner Shirt is in order because that is exactly how I feel!

30 Posters, 30 Days: Day 29

Tim Gough designed this poster in 24 hours:

Cursed Wings, a film by Alyxyndyr

Logline: Daisuke Toukagen all of a sudden finds himself with black wings coming out of his back, and the title of the town legend on his shoulders. But will he actually follow through and listen to his parents' wishes for him to be the Guardian of the Museum, or use his newly found talents to steal from the very museum he was chosen to protect?

Daisuke Toukagen thought nothing of the town legend of the Guardian of the Museum, despite the fact that his family used to own the museum, and his best friend's obsession with it. The dark angel—as some called it—acted as a night guard of sorts, throwing thieves into a large iron cage in the front of the museum for the police to take care of in the morning. However, his father—the current night guard—told him the story was ridiculous. So Daisuke thought nothing of it… until large, black, angel-like wings grew out of his back.

After a rather large attack on the museum, during which his father gets gravely injured, Daisuke is suddenly alone in the museum at night. Will he become the Guardian of the Museum like his parents want him to be? Or will his talents as a thief cause him to steal from the museum rather than protect it? And why does it seem like the thieves are more interested in defeating him, than actually stealing?

Tim Gough has been working in Philadelphia as a designer/art director for various agencies and design firms for the past eight years. His art is influenced by the screen printing process and mid-century graphics. In 2007 Tim left the agency life behind to pursue illustration and art full time. His work has been found in books, magazines, newspapers, and other ephemera nationwide and abroad. www.timgough.org

This month, the first NaNoWriMo novel to become a Hollywood...

This month, the first NaNoWriMo novel to become a Hollywood movie appeared screens around the world. Yep, Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants is finally in theaters! I went with some OLL staffers to see it last night, and we all ate too much popcorn and had a great time. When I got home, I got inspired and dug through the WrimoRadio vaults and pulled out this interview I did with Sara from 2009. Where she offers some tips for the home stretch of NaNoWriMo (equally applicable to Script Frenzy!), and also invites you to come as her guest to the movie's premiere. Sorry we, um, didn't mention this earlier.

Just click on the black bar above the elephant to hear the interview!

Image of Sara Gruen with one of the stars of the movie courtesy www.saragruen.com

30 Posters, 30 Days: Day 28

Peter Buchanan-Smith designed this poster in 24 hours:

How Bud and Earl Saved the World, a stage play by crazed.actor

Logline: Sheriff's Deputy Bud and redneck friend Earl are convinced that their local truck stop and diner in the desert of West Texas is the potential landing zone for an alien invasion.

Bud is a Sheriff's Deputy out in the middle-of-nowhere West Texas. Earl, his best friend, is a fixture at the truck stop and diner which is the social center of the town. Bud has become convinced he is witnessing flying saucers on a nightly basis, and is concerned about the potential consequences if he's correct. Bud confides in Earl, whose reaction would be somewhat understated as "skeptical." Nonetheless, Earl grudgingly agrees to go saucer-hunting with his friend, if for no other reason than to prove that Bud's imagination has run away with him. But an (unexplained?) encounter in the desert makes Earl a true believer, hell-bent on convincing the world—or at least the local news—that we're under attack.

Peter Buchanan-Smith is a New York–based designer, author, and entrepreneur whose career has included art direction of the New York Times; creative direction for Paper magazine; and work for fashion icon Isaac Mizrahi, musical legends David Byrne, Brian Eno, Philip Glass, and the band Wilco. His first tome, Speck: A Curious Collection of Uncommon Things explores the fascinating lives of ordinary people and commonplace objects. This connection between people and objects is also at the heart of Buchanan-Smith's most recent venture, Best Made Co.