My first thought on taking it out of the box was, “jesus, Jim, this is huge.” Because Jim, or JH Williams III to you, wanted a permanent hardcover edition that would sit right next to his catalogue of fine art editions. But it is a much larger book than I was expecting. Mr Williams took the lead on this one precisely because he wanted it to match his other books, and I just approved the designs and watched him make something marvellous, which was frankly very relaxing. It’s a lovely thing to own, and one of my own favourite pieces.
Got a stupid heavy box last week, only just got around to opening it, and, shit, I thought this was coming out next year. Amazon still says it’s out next year and has it on pre-order.. But here’s copies. So weird to see work from twenty-five-plus years ago under one cover. But also lovely to see Tom and Bryan’s art from back then all over again.
Trivia: I kept the character Swift from the previous run because she was created by the previous writer’s daughter and I thought she’d like to see her character continue. I have no idea if she ever did, but I hated the idea of a young kid opening a copy and not seeing her own character there.
I’ve used pocket-size hardback Moleskines for decades. I’m reaching the point where they’re getting hard to store, and, frankly, it feels like the paper is getting worse right as they’re getting more expensive. Also, my habit of breaking projects and ideas out into separate notebooks from the main notebook means that I’m wrangling a pouch stuffed with a dozen Field Notes books in addition to the main zibaldone-style object.
I looked at Midori notebooks, but to me they look overpriced and there are some disappointing reviews about their quality these days. So I went with something else.
This is the Passport sized Wanderings notebook. Wanderings offer what are essentially Midori clones — people call those “fauxdori” – but have thought just a little bit harder about the materials and design.
I’m really happy with the Wanderings Passport.
Here’s how they work. What you get is the leather cover and some bands. You slip the bands around the actual notebooks to bind them into the cover. I have three of these inserts in mine currently, but I’ve read you can bind as many as five in, and I have some extra bands in case I ever want to try that. The innards can be highly customised. And they fit Midori Passport inserts or any number of fauxdori innovations at that size.
These notebooks come without bookmark ribbons, and, having been a Moleskine user for so long, I am used to having a bookmark (that the cats chew when I’m not looking). So I bought some brass bookmark clips (UK) (US+) to locate my places in each of the three books.
In my Moleskines, I would index the most useful items by numbering on the first page. With these, since they’ll all get tossed into a box when completed, I’m writing the index on the front cover. So it’ll be a case of sorting through the box looking for dates and index entries to locate whatever I might be looking for. (I refer to old notebooks often.)
You can buy some delightful, stitched notebooks with good paper from Wanderings. But I found passport-sized stapled ruled notebooks in 100gsm paper super cheap – I note they’ve gone up in price now, but they’re still cheaper than six Wanderings books and here they are.
The Passport size is different to the Moleskine. Shorter and wider. It’s a bit of a struggle to get it into a shirt pocket. But it feels nice in the hand, and it will make me use my bag when I go out rather than stuff every pocket.
I did also buy a leather and brass pen loop for it, but I don’t like the fit. So, for now, this is what it looks like.
This now becomes the “everything” notebook. From usual daybook thoughts and paste-ins (photos, printed material), to project-specific books, to the LTD planning and scheduling. Everything I need is under one roof.
Midoris and other variants locate the bands’ beads on the back. Wanderings get it on the spine, which helps it lay open and stops you from having to write over a bump when you’re working on the right hand side pages.
The leather gets dinged up pretty easily, but, honestly, that’s okay. It’s going to wear and weather. In five years it will look completely different. I’m really interested to see what it looks like in ten years.
Bailing out of my previous system means that I won’t be starting a new notebook on Jan 1 any more. I will probably miss that clicking-over into a new year. But now is the time to take the long view and to quit listening to the clicking and ticking. This is a system for moments, not times.
I know I’m going to miss the size and hard back of Moleskines, but I’m determined to make this work. It feels more functional and sustainable, currently.
Available wherever you get your podcasts, or at the hosting page:
104: The Devil Runs Out
A routine examination of a dark matter lab turns into a race against time, as Carnack is forced to pursue a face from his past intent on human sacrifice. Starring James Callis and Brett Dalton.
Years ago, a cosmologist called Laura Mersini-Houghton came up with a theory about the CMB Cold Spot, a vast expanse of space that is colder than the surrounding void. Mersini-Houghton contends that the Cold Spot is the bulge where another universe is bumping into ours.
It has been stuck in my head ever since. Sometimes you want years, even decades to store an idea until you can make a story with it. This is why we keep notebooks, folks.
Sometime around 2020, I came across the following idea, advanced by Melvin Vopson: information is the foundational building block of the universe, and it has mass and potential energy. It is the fifth form of matter, and it’s what we’ve confused “dark matter” for. Calculations of the likely volume of information in the universe roughly correlate to the estimated volume of dark matter.
There was no world in which I wasn’t going to use that to tell a story with.
I’m always wary about using technical language in a script, because t’s just adding additional hurdles for actors. But I didn’t see a way around it for this show, so I just crossed my fingers and assumed there would be a number of takes for some scenes. Alicia Witt did not need additional takes, nor did she need pronouncement checks or explanations. She just knew.
Sigsand. The Sigsand Manuscript was the Necronomiconesque evil magic book in the stories of Carnacki The Ghost-Finder by William Hope Hodgson. Hodgson, who was born thirty miles away from me, was an author, soldier and bodybuilder who once fitted chains to Houdini so tightly that the escape artist complained that Hodgson had injured him and jammed the locks.
Smack-dab between his birthplace and mine is Writtle, the birthplace of radio. And now you have the secret code.
Found on Matt Webb’s blog, the difficulties with our comic SVK, which was sold direct by his company to readers:
It reminds me a shipping snafu with SVK, the amazing comic book by Warren Ellis and Matt Brooker, that we published at BERG, from Jack Schulze’s original concept, way back in 2011.
The macguffin in the story is a device that make people’s thoughts visible – as words floating about their heads. Thought bubbles, of course, in the outer reality of the reader.
And the comic shipped with an ultraviolet flashlight.
The comic was printed with an extra, invisible UV ink. (Which I seem to remember had some particular security around it because they don’t want it used for counterfeiting?) So you had this double layer.
ANYWAY.
Shipping.
The flashlights were flat, credit card-sized, push to activate. So they slipped easily into the shipping envelope.
You can see where this is going.
When the comics were packaged, and then when the packages were boxed, and then when the ones at the ends were squeezed, some of the flashlights would activate inside the envelopes and the batteries would run done, and comics with dead UV flashlights went through many letterboxes.
You wouldn’t believe how much prep and risk mitigation we’d done up-front.
Yet I remember tracking the percentage failure rate. Oof.
We shipped a lot of replacements.
The second printing had the flashlights in an extra bubblewrap pouch.
The thing was difficult enough to write. I can’t imagine what it was like to deal with production and shipping. I will always love that little book, though. Matt Brooker did an astonishing job with it, and I got to make it with my friends.
