Pen and paper, ink and dye…

 

Since going super high-tech last year with software-based high end intelligence analysis to document my Thieves’ Guild stuff, I’ve ditched right back to pen and paper this year, and not only that, but someone (the wonderful Lisa Lovebucket) invited me to be part of the Post Apocalypse School of Teesside… and so began a summer of boiling up vegetables, leaves and fruit and filling the house with sheets and sheets of dyed and handmade paper as well as various scraps of material steeped in all sorts of natural colours.

I’m not totally over it yet and I’m in the middle of a load of little projects… (I’ve also become totally obsessed with embroidering tiny wildflowers onto teabags) but my latest is a Japanese stab-bound notebook of everything I could ever need to know about my Thieves’ Guild universe. Somehow it feels more real being written in ink on paper soaked in tea with torn and half-nibbled edges… much more so than being captured within a software programme on a computer that needs to be turned on before it’ll work.

    

 

But then I’ve always loved playing with anachronisms. I write far flung, future war, other side of the galaxy stuff with the highest tech imaginable, and yet we still sometimes need to light a candle in a tunnel or drive a beat up old jeep with broken mirrors across the desert of a far off, long abandoned colony.

 

Going back to the ink and dye, I had good intentions of writing a meticulous blog post about how to dye materials and paper with such awesome botanicals as red cabbage (makes blue!), avocado (a beautiful peach) and foraged blackberries (a delicate dark grey once dried)… but there are so many great posts and videos online, seriously just go and watch some and give it a go.

 

A couple of pointers if you do:

 

1.     Add clove to any ink or dye and it keeps fresh for ages.

2.     The science of mordants is fascinating. A mordant helps the dye to take and it can change the end colour. I didn’t mess with alum mordants. Any substance that needs face masks and ventilation is a tad risky in the home of a cockatiel. I have enjoyed playing with vinegar and rusty nails to make iron mordant, but then I love the scuzzy rust-tainted look. Some dyes and fabrics don’t need them, some are more cool if you do use one. Play, experiment, and be happy whatever happens. I didn’t ever manage to recreate any colours I made, but the new ones were always just as exciting.

3.     Need to make your own homemade ink to write that super important post-apocalypse treaty…? Red wine. I played with all the others and again red cabbage for blue (or bright green if you add bicarbonate of soda!) was cool, and I spent ages trying various different proportions of gum Arabic to thicken and stabilise, but actually, plain red wine straight from the bottle or even a fairly strong coffee plus a dippy fountain pen produced beautiful writing.

4.     Binding handmade paper and rescued paper (those endless bundles of Amazon packing paper) into notebooks is addictive. I’ve had fun playing with hand sewing a text block (folded paper sets) with coptic and kettle stitch methods then binding into a hardbound cover, and then simply sewing signatures straight into a cover, but I think my favourite is the Japanese stab binding. I would say it’s simple but I just broke four needles binding my TGU everything book. 

 

And in amongst all this, I have been writing. I’m well into big book 7, enjoying being with NG, and I’m also working on the second volume of Collision Theory short stories. We’re also working on more TG audiobooks to be released next year.

If you missed Collision Theory Vol#1, it’s available here.

 

 

As much as lockdown was hard, this has been a tough year for a load of other reasons, and I know many people are feeling the same. We do what we can, we look after everyone around us and if we need to snatch a few minutes here and there to go elsewhere and fight aliens, then we’re grateful that those wonderful people around us understand.

 

And if you’d like to talk about writing and publishing, give me a shout. I’m always happy to help.
xx