Author Archives: Scott Dawson

First attempt at a cover for The Lonely Little Fridge!

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Pen-and-ink artwork before colouring with watercolours. Complete with ink blotches!

This is my first attempt at laying out the cover for The Lonely Little Fridge. The artwork is india ink over pencil sketches on paper.

Because the artwork was largeish (2 panels 8.5 inches square, plus a 0.25-inch spine between), I scanned it in five pieces using VueScan. Then I opened all the pieces in Photoshop and assembled them into one image there. Because the linework is so sparse, Photoshop’s auto-align function didn’t have enough to work with, so I aligned by hand and used the auto-blend function to smooth things out. Then I used Levels to expand the dynamic range, smashing light greys toward white and dark greys toward black.

IngramSpark provides templates for each size and type of cover they offer. This cover will be case-bound, with a page trim size of 8.5 inches square. One of the templates is an InDesign file, so I built the cover on it, inserting the artwork and text on layers between the ISBN layer and the layer with guides and printed info.

Once I get the artwork coloured (via Viviva watercolours), I will scan it again and do this all over again!

Locations for “The Rabbit Hole”

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The original alt.devilbunnies story postings that provided the characters I reference in The Rabbit Hole mentioned Kingston, Ontario, Canada. When I was writing the story, I needed to firm up my knowledge of the locations. So here are some of the locations:

  • The motel where the Aduins live is based on a motel on Old Highway 2, west of downtown Kingston. 3100 Princess Street.
  • The house where Landon lives does not actually exist. Balaclava Street is real, but 5 Balaclava Street appears to be a driveway or an empty lot.
  • The intersection of Princess and Centennial, in all its shopping-plaza-lined glory.

Legal Deposit

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When publishing a book in Canada, it is an actual legal requirement to send a copy or two to the national library for their collection.

This applies to printed books, ebooks, serial publications, video and audio recordings, maps, microforms, even sheet music.

The materials go into the national library, and one copy is made available for the public, while the other goes into The Archives.

More from Library and Archives Canada.

Preparing to print a hardcover

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The Lonely Little Fridge is going to be a hardcover and a fixed-format ebook.

Amazon print-on-demand does not print hardcovers, so I set up an account at IngramSpark (https://www.ingramspark.com/), the publishing platform, who does print hardcovers. They also handle distribution worldwide; bookstores order from them.

In order to print with them, we have to provides all sorts of information, in addition to the actual book files.

Continue reading →

Languages, Languages

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I am hoping to get my books translated into as many languages as possible.

I’m starting with the smaller ones, with The Lonely Little Fridge to be specific. The actual word count of The Lonely Little Fridge is only around 700, so it should be relatively easy and inexpensive to have it translated.

I’m going to translate it into Esperanto and hopefully have someone else check it. I would very much like it to be translated into French.

I’d also like it to be translated into Indigenous languages, such as Inuktitut (with the syllabic writing). or Kanien’kéha (known to English-speakers as Mohawk) or Anishinaabemowin (known to English-speakers as Ojibwe).

Backing the Etherington Brothers

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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1378058646/how-to-think-when-you-draw-book-4-reprinting-sold-out-books

I just backed this art book printing and reprinting project!

I kept seeing bits of the artwork copied into places like Instagram, and I didn’t know where it came from. But then I stumbled across the book reprint project on Kickstarter. And that led me to the source, the Etherington Brothers out of England:

https://theetheringtonbrothers.blogspot.com/

The website has hundreds of little segments giving tips and tricks on drawing and writing topics.

Alas, no exhibiting at online TCAF… this year.

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However, I got a great message back from them with some useful advice:

For those who are interested in applying for TCAF in the future, we want to take a moment to provide some context for what our committee considers when selecting applicants for TCAF:

TCAF exhibitors should have a substantial body of comics in print. We are a comics focused show, which means that we try to prioritize exhibitors who have lots of comics for sale.

TCAF exhibitors are encouraged to debut new work at the festival. New comics and new books help make TCAF exciting for patrons, and tend to ensure more successful and profitable shows for exhibitors. It’s great to see applicants who have a solid idea of a new comics project, especially one that has a clear and confident plan for completion.

It’s important to note that these aren’t “the rules” for applying to TCAF, and many other factors are taken into consideration, but we hope this helps with your future TCAF applications.

TCAF

So I’m going to finish “Little Lost Part” as if I were exhibiting it at TCAF, and keep going from there!