Pen and paper, ink and dye���

 

Since going super high-tech last year with software-based highend intelligence analysis to document my Thieves��� Guild stuff, I���ve ditchedright back to pen and paper this year, and not only that, but someone (thewonderful Lisa Lovebucket) invited me to be part of the Post Apocalypse Schoolof Teesside��� and so began a summer of boiling up vegetables, leaves and fruitand filling the house with sheets and sheets of dyed and handmade paper as wellas various scraps of material steeped in all sorts of natural colours.

I���m not totally over it yet and I���m in the middle of a loadof little projects��� (I���ve also become totally obsessed with embroidering tiny wildflowers onto teabags) but my latest is a Japanese stab-bound notebook ofeverything I could ever need to know about my Thieves��� Guild universe. Somehowit feels more real being written in ink on paper soaked in tea with torn andhalf-nibbled edges��� much more so than being captured within a softwareprogramme on a computer that needs to be turned on before it���ll work.

     

But then I���ve always loved playing with anachronisms. Iwrite far flung, future war, other side of the galaxy stuff with the highesttech imaginable, and yet we still sometimes need to light a candle in a tunnelor drive a beat up old jeep with broken mirrors across the desert of a far off,long abandoned colony.

 

Going back to the ink and dye, I had good intentions ofwriting a meticulous blog post about how to dye materials and paper with suchawesome botanicals as red cabbage (makes blue!), avocado (a beautiful peach)and foraged blackberries (a delicate dark grey once dried)��� but there are somany great posts and videos online, seriously just go and watch some and giveit a go.

 

A couple of pointers if you do:

 

1.    Add clove to any ink or dye and it keeps freshfor ages.

2.    The science of mordants is fascinating. A mordanthelps the dye to take and it can change the end colour. I didn���t mess with alummordants. Any substance that needs face masks and ventilation is a tad risky inthe home of a cockatiel. I have enjoyed playing with vinegar and rusty nails tomake iron mordant, but then I love the scuzzy rust-tainted look. Some dyes andfabrics don���t need them, some are more cool if you do use one. Play,experiment, and be happy whatever happens. I didn���t ever manage to recreate anycolours I made, but the new ones were always just as exciting.

3.    Need to make your own homemade ink to write thatsuper important post-apocalypse treaty���? Red wine. I played with all the othersand again red cabbage for blue (or bright green if you add bicarbonate ofsoda!) was cool, and I spent ages trying various different proportions of gum Arabicto thicken and stabilise, but actually, plain red wine straight from the bottleor even a fairly strong coffee plus a dippy fountain pen produced beautifulwriting.

4.    Binding handmade paper and rescued paper (thoseendless bundles of Amazon packing paper) into notebooks is addictive. I���ve hadfun playing with hand sewing a text block (folded paper sets) with coptic andkettle stitch methods then binding into a hardbound cover, and then simplysewing signatures straight into a cover, but I think my favourite is theJapanese stab binding. I would say it���s simple but I just broke four needlesbinding my TGU everything book. 

 

And in amongst all this, I have been writing. I���m well intobig book 7, enjoying being with NG, and I���m also working on the second volumeof Collision Theory short stories. We���re also working on more TG audiobooks tobe released next year.

If you missed Collision Theory Vol#1, it���s available here.

 

 

As much as lockdown was hard, this has been a tough year fora load of other reasons, and I know many people are feeling the same. We dowhat we can, we look after everyone around us and if we need to snatch a fewminutes here and there to go elsewhere and fight aliens, then we���re grateful thatthose wonderful people around us understand.

 

And if you���d like to talk about writing and publishing, give mea shout. I���m always happy to help.
xx

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