Thursday, February 4, 2010

Design Samples and Time Travel

They came! They came! The first draft design pdf-thingys of what the book will actually look like! It looked so official and so lovely! It was bizarre/surreal/fantastic to see the text that lived for so long in my little 'manuscript' folder on my laptop desktop all grown up and turned into proper book pages.

Because my book is written in a nutty, unexplained patchwork style, the layout is super design heavy. I wanted the story to be a run down a rabbit hole and into another time having no idea why sort of paper trail experience. All the elements (it turns out that there are about thirty of them--yikes) need to be distinct and the diary needs to be recognizable as the control group in this experiment. Tricky to do. And make it look like the period? And not strain the eye, confuse the reader, or in any other way be too much, too little or annoying? Wow, is that hard.

I really did not want to explain the bits of paper-- to do the young woman opens forgotten old chest in her attic and there are neat bundles of diaries/letters/recipes/playbills/newspapers/shoemaker bills and medical journals all relating to someone she finds out is her ancestor sort of story. Icky ick. That sort of tidy, discovery of right paper by right person paper stuff always drives me bonkers in historical fiction. I want to step into a place and not step out. Mysteries and thrillers I expect to be jostled around and pitched out of this or that century--fantastic, but in historical fiction I just want to go somewhere and stay there. The same way I like to travel--go somewhere and make friends with a place; set up shop, move in. I love having time in a book. If a book is too short I cannot commit to it as I know we will break up too soon.

Unless of course the time travel is done really well as in A.S. Byatt's Possession--brilliant and the discovery goes on and on and is the story or as in Wuthering Heights. Mr. Lockwood very conveniently hears the whole history of Cathy the Ghost who he is about to meet and wacky Heathcliff who is about to join her for an undead walk on the moors. Convenient but so good I can forgive all its convenience.

In other news, I went and got Meredith's book, If You Want to Cry, Go Outside. It is sharp, witty and a really fun kind of smart. My dad (who tends towards history, politics and P.G. Wodehouse) has also picked it up I noticed. And my book sold to Italy this morning! Royalties in euros--yipee!

6 comments:

  1. Priya, you are too kind! Congrats on Italy; that's so exciting! I can't wait to read YOUR book!

    ReplyDelete
  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wait.. so the actual diary entries and letters and newspaper articles will all look different on the page? Like House of Leaves-syle? This is exciting.

    ReplyDelete
  4. thank you guys!

    meredith the book is super! i love the sharp clean writing style!

    yes the book is going to have different styles and fonts and newspapers looking like newspapers and letters on fancy paper etc. i am thrilled! i'll send you the sample! xox

    ReplyDelete
  5. priya you must be so excited!!! congratulations again so very much!!! i am so thrilled for you!

    ReplyDelete
  6. i am. i really really am. i just read about your play and it sounds so utterly and perfectly like you. love it! xox

    ReplyDelete

Please feel free to leave a comment! I would love to hear from you!