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Jan. 3rd, 2010
Best Christmas Ever.
Jan. 3rd, 2010 09:41 pmA couple of days before Christmas I walked out with J to find a package propped against the door in a mailing bag. Ron (one-fourth of the Basement) had sent me a present. He'd rung a few days earlier doublechecking my address and said he wanted to send me a book.
I thought this was touching and weird as we never send each other Christmas presents. At most we fork out for airfares and try to arrange for us all to be at the same spot once every ten years.
I opened the package and this is what was in it:
( Read more... )
I stood there looking at it, then opened the book. I actually could not believe what I was seeing. The words were really familiar. I did a poor job of explaining to J exactly what this was. You might notice there's no publisher's stamp or author on the cover.
So I told her, "I wrote this."
( Read more... )
Which is only half-true: I half wrote it. Ron had direct say over the actions and a lot of the dialogue of one character,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bell_man another and James a third.
What Ron andbell_man had done is, they'd taken the write-ups of this game I've been running for them over Skype and a digital whiteboard once a month (more or less) for the last two years and turned it into this.
Ron sourced professional publishing software, researched how pros lay out their work, and farmed out editing the material between himself andbell_man. Ron has a friend who's a leatherworker, who's married to a bookbinder, and since August they've been working on getting the right people in the right place at the right time to create four copies of this book in time for Christmas. One for me, one for Ron, one for bell_man and one for James.
They'd been working on it since August.
I was utterly lost for words. This also means my first appearance in hardback is down to the efforts of some of my best friends.
I love my friends. I can't believe the effort they went to for this. It's just an incredible, beautiful thing.
( Read more... )
Between having J here, a lovely Christmas, a great NYE and all the plans for the coming year, this has all been flat-out wonderful.
I thought this was touching and weird as we never send each other Christmas presents. At most we fork out for airfares and try to arrange for us all to be at the same spot once every ten years.
I opened the package and this is what was in it:
( Read more... )
I stood there looking at it, then opened the book. I actually could not believe what I was seeing. The words were really familiar. I did a poor job of explaining to J exactly what this was. You might notice there's no publisher's stamp or author on the cover.
So I told her, "I wrote this."
( Read more... )
Which is only half-true: I half wrote it. Ron had direct say over the actions and a lot of the dialogue of one character,
bell_man another and James a third.What Ron and
bell_man had done is, they'd taken the write-ups of this game I've been running for them over Skype and a digital whiteboard once a month (more or less) for the last two years and turned it into this. Ron sourced professional publishing software, researched how pros lay out their work, and farmed out editing the material between himself and
bell_man. Ron has a friend who's a leatherworker, who's married to a bookbinder, and since August they've been working on getting the right people in the right place at the right time to create four copies of this book in time for Christmas. One for me, one for Ron, one for bell_man and one for James.They'd been working on it since August.
I was utterly lost for words. This also means my first appearance in hardback is down to the efforts of some of my best friends.
I love my friends. I can't believe the effort they went to for this. It's just an incredible, beautiful thing.
( Read more... )
Between having J here, a lovely Christmas, a great NYE and all the plans for the coming year, this has all been flat-out wonderful.