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inafever · 2 months ago

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March and April are always quiet bookbinding months for me, because I'm recovering from Binderary and this year I'm also in the market for a new printer. But I did take the time to make these very handsome fellows, and they're a new kind of project for me in a couple of ways. They're anthologies! With themes! Spaces Between is a collection of Good Omens ghost stories, and Roaming the Night is similar but with vampire and werewolf stories. They're both multi-author works and the stories within aren't affiliated beyond the fact that they're my favorites and mostly too short for case binds, but I think they came together really cohesively and I love them to bits.

More pics under the cut, including links to the stories at the end.

First, some individual photos. These are legal quartos, very nice to hold. That's marbled paper on the cover, though it is the lineco brand and I'm not sure if it's actually marbled or just printed. The text is silver foil htv. The spines and fore edges are book cloth. I had originally planned to do a more traditional 3/4 bind, with corner caps, but my marbled paper was a little too skinny to do the fore edge turn-in, and I've wanted to do a bind like this for a bit so this was an excellent opportunity. And it won't be the last time; I really like how they look and feel.

Spine view and top view. More silver foil, matching handmade endbands in red and black, and the same gray ribbon for the bookmark. I love making books in this pattern, where they're not a matched set but enough details are the same to make them feel like they go together.

Case in point, Roaming has the red cover with the gray paper for its endpapers, and Spaces has the gray cover with the red one for its endpapers. They're inverses of each other and I could not be more delighted with them.

Interiors for Roaming the Night. Vampires on the title page and werewolves in the table of contents. I couldn't decide between them so I incorporated them both. I'm trying to jazz up my ToC designs and this one turned out very well. Don't strain your eyes trying to read the titles; I've got links at the end to all but one of them.

Title page and Toc for Spaces Between. I wasn't originally going to have an image on the ToC for this one, but after I added one for Roaming I thought Spaces should have one too. And at least four of the stories in it involve a haunted building or structure, so a spooky key was definitely the way to go.

The titles for both books are my own invention; they are not named for any one story in the collections. I struggled with that a bit (I hate naming things, it's the hardest part of any creative project). I've done the whole "(Longest Story Title) and Other Stories" before and it's a fine approach, but given that there are multiple authors and they're not in sequence with each other it just didn't feel appropriate to elevate one writer's story over the others that way. I like what I settled on though, even if it was hard.

Typeset photos! They're pretty straightforward. I don't like to get too fancy on quarto typesets; I don't usually feel like there's enough space on the page. I've only just realized that the photos are both entanglednow stories, oops.

Another set of interiors that only fellow typesetters are going to think is neat. I finally figured out how to make Word put different headers in each section, so every story has its own title and author at the top of the page. I think this'll only be useful in anthologies, but I am very proud of myself and I think it looks very professional.

That's it for photos! Beyond this point are links to the stories, my reasons for loving them, and tags for the authors.

The stories included in Spaces Between are:

13 Days of Halloween (series by @entanglednow)--I always love entangled’s way with worldbuilding. Their stories always feel complete and lived-in and that’s a wonderful thing in fandom. Even though not every story in this series is an exact fit for the collection, I just couldn’t bring myself to leave any of them out. Filing Room 57 and A Friend in Need in particular have stuck with me for years.

Soaked (@racketghost)--a bit of a loose interpretation of the theme. There’s no ghost in it, nothing inexplicable and horrifying. The fear is entirely explicable and very sexy, in ways that the other stories here are not. But it absolutely nails the atmosphere. Spooky. Unnerving. It just so happens that it’s also playful. It’s a very interesting balance.

The Wrong Side of the Door (@holycatsandrabbits)--singularly unnerving. I love how the beginning so closely catches the feeling of sensational reality TV ghost hunters and then pulls the perfect shift and makes the horror real. I also love that in spite of our two leads professing how much they hate each other, they’d still run into a burning/haunted/otherwise terrible and dangerous building if the other was trapped inside. That’s devotion.

Last Crossing (also by holycatsandrabbits)--Atmosphere is everything to me in horror and Dannye always nails it. This is such an inventive premise, and it’s like I can see outlines of a bigger story; I want there to be more. Something about maritime disasters in particular resonates really hard for me and God the imagery in this one is so incredibly unnerving. I want to sink my teeth into it.

Haunted (@tawnyontumblr)--the one I went back and forth about including for the longest time. The ghosts in it are not real, are a manifestation of very old regrets, as opposed to the literal real ghosts in the others. But it’s a powerful story about accepting help when you need it, and about all the ways in which things can be haunted. And above all it feels like a horror movie, and even more importantly it’s my anthology and I wanted this in it. I am eating it up. Delicious.

the thirteenth night (@forineffablereasons)--I love how they’ve incorporated so many horror tropes into one story, and that the supernatural terrors retain their sense of menace even when the ones facing them are so strongly magical on their own. It’s still a believable threat even though they aren’t in an AU where everyone’s human. Brilliantly done, I love it.

The stories in Roaming the Night are:

In the Blood (entanglednow)--excellent character work, as always. There are no vampires in the Good Omens canon, but damned if this isn’t what they’d be like if there were. It’s also extremely sexy and has top-notch pining in spite of its relatively short length. I’ve always loved entangled's approach to unconventional sex practices and this is no exception. It was one of the first stories I thought of when I first conceptualized this anthology.

Love in the Wild (entanglednow)--love the trust on display between the characters. Again, they’ve got an unconventional relationship and they’ve had to adapt to that, and that willingness to make it work is the crux around which the whole story turns. The love is always there.

Night Walk (@snae-b)--I want this to be novel-length so badly. It’s got fantastic worldbuilding and I feel like I’m just getting glimpses of it from the other side of a curtain. Snae’s fic always has really unique settings, though usually their stories are much longer and often more overtly horror-focused. And I love how this one in particular preserves the forbidden relationship dynamic that’s so compelling in the Good Omens fandom. Delicious.

Food For Thought--tragically I can't link this one as it was a WorseOmens story and they removed all their fics at the end of last year. I had an offline backup saved or I wouldn't have been able to include it at all. You'll never see this, friend, and I know you must have had your reasons, but I know I'm not the only one who misses you and wishes you well.

Every Wolf Needs to Howl (tawnyowl)--another story that I knew from first conception had to be in this volume. The overwhelming majority of werewolf fics in this fandom are Werewolf Aziraphale, or Both Werewolves, or Oops All Porn. (Not that that’s a complaint. I just want some plot and character in my smut, and that’s where this fic delivers. And Werewolf Crowley is hot too.) It’s another star on the worldbuilding front; I’d read more chapters of this about the characters’ backgrounds and what it’s like living on the moors.

For Life (tawnyowl)--like a quarter of the GO werewolf fics of the right length for this book are Tawny’s. Thanks friend, please keep up the good work. Helping each other heal from trauma is always a compelling narrative, and again I would read more of this to find out about the world and watch the relationship develop. It’s got an interesting approach of shedding the “monster” identity by embracing it, using it to redefine the self. Both of our leads have done this and they’re using that experience to empathize with each other. And it’s hot. The communication and acceptance is hot and also the sex is hot. Both can be true at once.

Less Dark A Place (orphaned)--including this fic was almost an accident. I was looking for something to bump up the page count and accidentally found a gem. God it’s so compelling, it’s a tragedy that the author orphaned it, whoever they were. I’d love to read more about how their relationship changes and how they both handle the challenges that you know without a doubt they will face. This would have made an incredible novel-length work. Leaving them on the precipice is compelling in its own way though—they’re teetering on the edge of something new and scary and uncertain, which is a lot like how an intense new romance feels even in real life.

Doggone Batty (@kedreeva)--the reason I decided to do both werewolves and vampires in the same anthology. I love the asexual and aromantic approach to relationships. I’m asexual myself so I appreciate seeing those relationships done this well; they don’t need to do those things in order to want to be close. The relationship doesn’t even have room for that, it’s too full of other things for me to think about what it doesn't have. I love the hilarious misunderstandings in this fic, the bit where Aziraphale learns how to do a thing just because it’s fun (barking at a closed door like an idiot), the twist is ludicrous (compliment), and I want to give them both hugs and couch cuddles.

Phew! That's a lot of text. Hopefully tumblr doesn't get huffy with me for including too many links and tags.

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