The first batch of “Little-Known Facts About Various Marine-Dwelling Animals” orders ships this morning. That orange envelope, for example, contains 3 copies going to the illustrator, Bran. The one on top is addressed to somewhere in California. The one on the bottom, the first one ordered, is going to Denmark.
So far I have bound 40. I am waiting for some more Washi before putting covers on the rest next week. The rest will ship then.
It looks like the limited first edition of 50 copies will sell out this week. There are about 10 left right now. Or so. Give or take. I haven’t checked my email in the last two minutes to see if any new orders have come in, so one never knows.
More info on the book and ordering on this page here.
Posted in Little-Known Facts, Metamorphosism
The book, Little-Known Facts About Various Marine-Dwelling Animals, is being released today. It is written by me and illustrated by Bran. I know some really critical people and they like both the texts and the illustrations.
You can read a little more about the book here. You can also order the book online from that page, and there is a flickr slide show of all the covers so far. There is some variety, and if you have any preferences you can let me know, but orders will be filled on a first-come-first-serve basis so there is no guarantee you will get the exact book you want.
Only 50, give or take a couple, copies of this hand-bound first edition will be produced. So you might want to order soon.
There is a flickr set showing the covers etc here.
The book is 82 pages, unnumbered, and chock full of neat illustrations by Bran.
The price is €16, which is about $23.50 depending on exchange rates, and includes shipping and handling to anywhere in the world.
Any nice comments may be posted in the comments to this post. Any questions etc should probably be mailed to metamorphosist (at) gmail (dot) com. Thanks!
Posted in Little-Known Facts, Metamorphosism
Alpha and I went to the southern edge of the Austrian province of Styria last weekend to hike around the vineyards and rolling hills and drink wine. It is right on the border with Slovenia, this area. Here is a picture of a road we walked on for a while – the border meanders down the middle of it: 
so I suppose I was actually standing in Slovenia when I took the picture.
It is a pretty time to be there, the leaves are changing and the morning fog is pretty. Our hotel was nice, if a bit larger than we like – we had expected a pension. It was the first hotel bed that didn’t break my back, and the couple who ran the place were very nice and hospitable to us even when we drank a lot of wine and got into circular arguments (with each other, not them).
Also the food is good there. Southern Styria in general, I mean.
We got pretty lost in the woods for a while, which is a tradition of ours, we always do that when we hike with these friends. Once we went to see some bears in cages for some reason. It was about a 3 mile walk, one-way. Returning home was one of the times we got lost. From our hotel, then, upon returning, I noticed you could see the bear cage place from our hotel, about 200 yards away through some vineyards. So I guess we took a real detour.
We drank some Sturm, which is fermented grape juice, but not yet wine. And we ate chestnuts. There are a lot of roadside stands there selling Sturm and chestnuts. I guess if chestnuts were called Drang in German it would be perfect, but unfortunately they’re called Kastanien, which sounds like a former Soviet Republic.
Here are some vineyards. We may be looking towards Slovenia there.
The third photo shows more vineyards, this one with a Klapotetz in it, which makes a sound that sounds like the name and is intended to frighten off birds that would otherwise eat the grapes. This is the romantic version of that “Raptor Reloaded” thing I mentioned the other day, where they play modern compositions to drive off the starlings.
I think everyone in our party enjoyed the trip. We may have drunk a little more wine than we should have. At least I think I may have. One morning I couldn’t find my pants right away, and I began to mentally retrace my steps, trying to reconstruct the previous night, because it seemed at that moment entirely logical that my pants could be somewhere other than in our hotel room.
I eventually found them on a chair under my other clothes. But from then on, I kept close track of my pants.
Posted in Metamorphosism