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Back again…

Finally moved down to England, after lots of delays, and settling into my tiny, new flat.

A lot of the stuff I was hoping to do last year never got done. Besides preperations for the expected move sidelining everything, my health has been getting steadily worse; I have myalgia, osteo-arthritis, a bad back and a wrecked knee – all together putting me in bed too many days.

The old client who was going to give me lots of work? She flounced off when I kept correcting the mistakes and errors in her MS. (Good riddance, I’d never liked her anyway – her writing was so bad, proofreading it actually made my teeth ache.) I still haven’t finished editing the Todmorden Tales, so they’re unlikely to get republished this year. And getting the Elfin Diary archives fully online is going to be a long slog as well.

But I’m making a start on things, even putting together a website for my editing and web design work.

I ate’nt ded yet!

in:

Blatant Plugs, Personal, work

The Todmorden Tales

The Todmorden Tales is a collection of short stories that Brian & I wrote in the mid-90s for The Little Red Book, a little magazine we published at the time. We’d often talked about putting them all together into a book, and actually did so in 2020. It sold very poorly (mainly from lack of publicity) and we talked quite often of republishing them, paying for some advertising, and putting out a kindle edition on Amazon. But then B got ill and all our plans got shelved….

A few months ago, I decided to crack on with the republication. Looking at our print copy, I was astonished at all the mistakes and typoes that got through what we had thought was a pretty thorough checking process. But it was actually our checking process that was the problem – every time one of us finished proofreading the MS, we put it onto a memory stick and passed it over to the other, who would correct it, add or delete stuff (B was constantly thinking up rewrites and additions) and pass it back for more proofing.

I think you can see the flaw in that.

I, at least, tried to take care in retitling each new copy – todtalescorrected_final_final etc. But B hardly ever did, and inevitably things got mixed up and somehow an uncorrected final_final_final_FINAL copy made its way to the printers.

Additionally, I wasn’t happy with some aspects of the writing. Some of the language and references were very much of their time and needed bringing up to date (who remembers steel dustbins and Freeman Hardy & Willis?) So I got busy with an overhaul of every story. Halfway though that, however, I was distracted with an offer of designing and formatting a book for print and the Tales got put aside for it. But ultimately things didn’t work out with the client and we parted ways. So here I am working on the The Todmorden Tales yet again. And I hope to have it ready for sale well before Xmas.

(Below is a cover ideaI’m working on.)

Possible cover idea. I’ll probablyhave changed it to something completely different by the time you’re reading this….

in:

Personal, work

My Work

Screenshot of my current layout and typesetting project, using Affinity Publisher

I’ve been using DTP (Desktop Publishing) programs since (I think) 1996, trying out a few and finally sticking with Serif PagePlus. We wanted to print a small quarterly magazine and PagePlus was cheap and easy to use. Other people started asking us to design and print stuff for them, so Oakleaf Print & Design was born.

PP was discontinued in 2016, but we continued using it – mainly because my husband flat out refused to try learning a new program. However, I was by then publishing and selling my own annual Elfin Diary; PagePlus had been replaced by Affinity Publisher, which was being offered at a very generous introductory price. I tried it for the Diary, immediately loved it, and can recommend it, especially for professional print work. And before you ask – yes, I’ve tried Adobe’s Indesign. The subscription price put me right off (the Affinity price structure is buy once, pay only for upgrades) and I didn’t particularly like it anyway.

I also use Affinity Photo, for editing and optimising images and Affinity Designer, for laying out covers. Part of the Affinity suite, they work so seamlessly with Publisher that I sometimes forget which program I’m working in. Hemingway Editor is very useful for spotting bad grammar and clumsy prose (this post has been run through it). Strangely, it doesn’t have a spellchecker, but Publisher does that job.

Yes, this is a blatant ad for my copyediting, design and layout services. What exactly does all that mean? OK, copyediting is correcting your MS for spelling, grammar & readability, and also factchecking; design is the overall look of the finished book (including cover design, if needed); layout (which includes typography) is is making the insides of your book look attractive and readable. Interested? My contact page is currently broken (I’m working on it) so at the mo, the quickest way to contact me is to drop me a DM onTwitter/X at @valdobson or just leave a comment below.

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Personal, Techie Stuff, work

“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.”

Image of a man sitting in an armchair with a laptop, in the middle of a clockface painted on the floor.
Photo by Kevin Ku on Unsplash

A short update post – a lot has been going on since I last posted.

Last year, after a long illness, my beloved Brian died. I am now on my own and thinking hard about my future. After two years of being a full-time carer, my health isn’t too good and I’ll need to move out of this house and back to England near my family. That means changing the title and tagline of this blog – directions to my new home will no longer include “turn left at the bridge”, and I will no longer be looking out over the lovely Galloway Hills.

I’ll also need to go back to the design, layout and publishing work that I used to do with Brian. A single person’s pension doesn’t stretch far these days; besides, I’m bored crapless and need something to get me out of bed in the mornings. I’ve just landed some copyediting and layout work for an old client and it’s feeling very satisfying. I’ll be hunting around for more work, making a proper business of it.

So, if you’ve a book that needs publishing/editing, drop me a line! I’ll soon be putting up a website purely for work and will gather a small portfolio together.

This will remain as my boring, rarely updated, personal blog.

The title quote is by William Penn, Quaker and founder of Pennsylvania.

in:

General, Personal, work

A Cat’s Tale (with no cat)

When I was twenty-one or so and unemployed and single, I shared a flat with four others, all similarly un- and under-employed. It was very Young Ones at times – we squabbled over the cleaning rota, ate quite a lot of lentils, had a laid-back landlord who was into Jung and primal screaming. Our weekly Giros arrived on Tuesdays, which meant that we were penniless by Monday morning.

(more…)

in:

General

Hard Sun review

“It’s as if Luther, Line of Duty and Utopia all went to the pub together, emerged several hours later, steaming, and decided to form a supergroup.”

(more…)

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Entertainment, Reviews

More Thoughts

This post is a sort of run-on from the last. I had a bit of a rant there about how “diverse” characters (and I’m not talking just about trans) shouldn’t be shoehorned into a creative work without justification. Welp, I wasn’t really expecting to have my point proved so quickly. (more…)

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Entertainment, General, I Am Reading:, Rants, Reviews

A Book Review (with diverse diversions)

Just finished John Scalzi’s Old Mans War. It’s now been out for 15 years and is one of those books that everyone who knows SF says you ought to read. So I finally did.

Clearly a homage to Robert Heinlein, it’s not a bad read at all – I only skipped a few pages, near the end, when I was in a hurry to get to the climax. The plot is basically this: in the future, humanity is exploring the stars and has discovered there are are lots of intelligent alien life forms already out there there; however (more…)

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Entertainment, I Am Reading:, Rants, Reviews

Mr Mercedes S1 Review

WARNING: SPOILERS APLENTY
So, having dealt with Designated Survivor (which didn’t survive), I’ve been watching the first series of Mr Mercedes. I loved the book and was interested to see what sort of mess the adaptation would turn out to be. Up till now, I’ve seen screen adaptations of eight King works – The Shining, Dolores Claiborne, Shawshank Redemption, Stand By Me, The Dome (TV series), Langoliers (TV series), Kingdom Hospital (TV series) and 11/22/63 (TV series). The movies were terrific; the TV series were spotty. The Dome was just terrible (every single recording of it should be confiscated, fired into the sun and never mentioned again); Kingdom Hospital was less terrible, but only slightly – it was at least four hours too long and nothing will make me sit through it a second time; Langoliers was OK but not memorable; 11/22/63 was terrific – mainly due to the fact that it cut out about 500 pages of padding and subplots from the novel and concentrated on the main story of the time-jumping hero.
So I was hoping that this one would be good, at least. (more…)

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Entertainment, Reviews

Designated Survivor review Pt 2

SPOILERS AHEAD
Well, I’ve carried on watching and have now finished Ep 15 (of 22). I’m not really excited about it, but I’ve paid for the whole series so I’m determined to get my money’s worth. Besides, I am mildly curious about how the story will pan out.
The US has turned out some excellent TV series – The Americans, The Wire, Mad Men, West Wing – but DS is nowhere near that standard, I’m afraid. (more…)

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Entertainment, Reviews