For those of you who missed it, here is the WHQR interview on local food.

I also added an “interviews” category in the site map.

I will be on WHQR Public Radio 91.3 Tuesday June 24th at around 12:20. Jemila Ericson will be interviewing me about local eating and our foodshed. The website has a link to listen live, and I think it will be archived as well. Jemila says it will be about a ten minute interview.

I am happy to finally announce that – after seven months of writing and rewriting, working with Josh on the illustrations, Nathaniel on the cover, and going back and forth on using a formal publisher - Quitter: Good Luck Not Dying by Trace Ramsey (that’s me) is now available for purchase. The book is 78 pages with over a dozen color illustrations. It is hand stitched, hardcover, numbered and made by hand by the author.

Considering the time, materials and general effort it takes to make one of these books, I decided on a price of $14 (updated in January 2009 to $20).

That might sound expensive for such a small book, but in a quick search of Amazon I could not find a 78 page hardcover for less than $20. Plus it is made by hand. That has to count for something.

I will pretty much make the books as I receive orders. PayPal seems to work well for most folks, but if you live near me or see me all the time and want to pay cash just let me know. Each book will get some goodies with it including buttons and/or stickers, maybe a book mark.

Thanks for keeping up with this project! I hope you support it if you can…

The first two attempts at making a hardcover book were miserable and complete failures. For the first attempt, I used some really simple looking instructions from DadCanDo.com. The instructions were so simple that when I followed the steps and completed the book I ended up with a sticky, bent, unattractive pile of cardboard and paper. Even after having dried for a day and half, the cloth that I used for the cover had dark stains from the glue that I used. Unattractive and shoddy looking -

The corners didn’t stick together the way they should and were coming apart a day later -

And the front pages were wrinkled and generally gross -

The second attempt didn’t yield any better results. After sleeping on it, getting some more supplies and watching some YouTube videos on bookbinding, I finally made a decent hardcover book.

I printed the book in four sections of eight pages. In the lingo of bookbinding these are called the signatures. It took me awhile to figure out that the software I am using (Adobe InDesign CS3) does not make this process easy unless you are a commercial printer. In order for me to print a book on my home printer I have to use a series of programs each requiring some of the same steps. Just figuring out those steps took several hours of searching the Internet, posting on forums and sending emails.

For this hardcover I used construction paper instead of the first few attempts using cloth. Much better results -

I have a few more minor problems to fix, but this stands as the prototype for making the Quitter hardcover book.