My copy of the printed Astronomical Calendar 2024 was delivered to me yesterday, September 25 – much earlier than the estimated Sep. 29 to Oct. 2. I hope you have the same luck.
It looks perfect. But the book is so intricate that that’s like swearing that every leaf in a forest is in place.
There is one unimportant difference between the electronic and printed versions of the book. It happened because the printed book requires two files: for the cover, and for the interior. So for the printed interior I had to delete the first two pages, containing the front cover with picture. This was surprisingly difficult and risky to the whole pagination, because “pages 1-2” had two meanings.
When you submit your files to be approved by the system, you wait up to 72 hours, but often only a day. Then it said: rejected, because the title on the spine should not come within an eighth of an inch of the folds. It should have been right, since I had used the 2023 book’s file as a template. But I made the letters on the spine smaller. Another day. Rejected again. So I deleted the spine title. That error disappeared. But rejected again, because the author on the cover must not conflict with the author on the title page.
What the hell!
There was no author name on the cover. Then I realized that the two words “Danae’s shower,” helpful title for the picture, had been interpreted by a robot algorithm as an author name!
Again, the same situation had worked okay in the 2023 book. But I deleted the two words from the cover file, used them instead in the description in the interior. Another day, then at last approved. Then you wait up to 5 days for the printed book to become orderable in all “markets” of the world.
I had wanted to get all this done before I became medically incapacitated from September 1 to about now.
Do you know a literary agent?
Small chance, but the number of readers of this blog is now well into four figures, so I hope. I have five “Unresolvable Stories” (maybe reminiscent of the “Five Escapers” poster) that I think should be published by someone other than me.
Comment, or email (see “Contact” in the menu at top).
__________
This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
Danny Boy always brings a tear to my eye. Have you and Tilly heard Paul Robeson’s rendition?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka5bDlC9C-w
It’s fun to imagine young Guy in a choir robe (but not fun to imagine the bullies). Life has so many interesting twists and turns.
Paul Robeson’s rendering is the one Tilly knows, she also likes his rendering of “The Bommy Bonny Banks of Loch Lomond”. She used to make me sing these as we bicycled along the Blue Ridge Parkway, because I started by belting out “La Donna e Mobile”, at whose fortissimo moent my handlebar tangled with hers and we soft-crashed into the grassy bank.
We hum it at choir warm-ups too.
I’m glad to know that. So it wasn’t just old Mr Ashley’s idea.
The older choirboys, who used to bully me, crudely joked that the tune wsas the London Derriere.
I learn from Wikipedia that it was collected by Jane Ross in the 19th century. But surely it must have been a fokk song, not just a tune that people hummed? Perhaps it was a tune that a fiddler improvized. For me it is an example of a LONG tume, of several themes that lead to each other; other examples being Bach’s “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring” amd Lehar’s “Gold andSilver Waltz”.
Silly robot. Since when do author names have apostrophes in them? LOL! Maddening, though.
Perhaps whoever wrote the algorithm omitted a rule “A string containing an apostrophe cannot be a name” because of Irish names like O’Donnell. We could imagine a heroine called Shower O’Danae. I remember a novel in the 1960s or 70s whose pretty woman was named Rain.
I thought I was ordering the 2024 calendar. But instead I got the 2023 calendar.
Oh Danae boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling, from glen to glen and down the mountainside … .
“Danny Boy” is Tilly’s favorite song. The long tune it uses is a centuries-old Irish one, “The Londonderry Air”. When I s (rather briefly) a choirboy, the church organist began his rehearsal sessions by having us hum this tune. It sort of puts your throat into the major scale.