Really, when it comes to fanbinding I clearly love a gimmick. My last go was making a mock Samuel French script and this time I decided to go for my beloved classic mass market paperback, soft paper and all.

I think I did okay for a first try? I was at the end of my glue bottle and pushing beyond my skills for the cover illustration (which is based on Gay Vets Ross Hossannah), but I am pleased with the end result. I’m already re-laying out the text block to incorporate what I’ve learned. I think the next try I am going to break the collection up so I can have two slim volumes that better fit the look of the mid-century era I was trying to evoke. See how thick this is next to the real thing!

Anyway here are the deets!

• Story: Take Your Shot (series, unfinished) by Inbox.
• Paper: Pacon Standard Weight Drawing Paper in Manila for the body, 60lb double-sided Polar Matte from Red River.
• Types: Overseer and Body Grotesque (Cover), Bahnschrift SemiBold and Constantia (Interior).
• Binding style: Perfect binding.

Okay, pics!

I think I did okay for the cover!! This is not my style and I straight up did a version to completion, hated it and tried again. On the rebind I’m going to have to make another cover illustration and I’m D: about it. That sprayed edge though–airbrush bb, thank you Createx Airbrush Colors in Opaque Aqua.

Now have some interiors.

See, the whole build. All of this madness that consumed me for like two weeks-plus as I hunted paper etc.–this was all for this final thing.

My answer for “how do you bind an unfinished fic?” Like, how does one convey: this is complete but not done? I don’t know how much truly beat to shit paperbacks you’ve handled in your life (or if you’re part of the elite who have several with no covers), but there is a flavour to the texture of pages ripped out of this kind of book. Which is part of why the paper type was so important. I needed the effect to feel right and “nice” book paper isn’t it. Anyway:

I feel like this story ends on an emotional fade-to-black. Like YES I would like to read more, but the last update was in 2016? We’re almost a decade from that. And part of me is like, “these guys need their privacy for how they ended this,” in a way. So this felt right. And, I have kind of a thing around Books As Objects and that the wear on an object, how it degrades and is used over time, is a huge part of what actually informs the experience of a book. So: I added a bunch of blank pages to the end of the text block, bound this whole thing and then ripped them out.

I love to make problems for myself. So, when I fell in love with a FNV fic and decided to fanbind it, decided it needed to evoke the pulpy mid-century mass market paperbacks that I myself read and collect. The thing is!! To really get the right tactile umami of these books you have to have the right paper. But who wants to buy the kind of paper mass market paperbacks were made with in bulk? It’s not acid free, it’s toothy but squishy, off-white in a way that is delicious only to the real freaks out there.

Now, at one time the illustrious French Paper company had Dur-O-Tone which was based on “everyday utilitarian newsprint paper” and came in a lovely “Aged Newsprint.” But it is no longer available in text weight! So I set out on a mostly-free sampling (good paper places will at most ask you to pay shipping for a couple slips of paper as you test finishes and colours) of possibles.

First up, a couple colours of Royal Sundancefrom The Paper Mill, because I thought maybe “speckle” would hit something evocative. It did not.

Not the right vibes at all.

Well, that’s fine. How about a selection from the folks who’d made the good stuff? French Paper has white text weight, all of which were 70lb, which I felt would be too “real” and stiff but we’re trying here.

Like?! I guess the top one here (Kraft Tone in Index Off-White) could do okay (it looked better in person)? I ordered some more samples from French, focusing on their Kraft Tone and Construction lines. Still, I felt like there had to be something better our there. I poked around looking for 50lb text weight and found something that absolutely is not meant for bookbinding: Pacon Standard Weight Drawing Paper in Manila.

I know it’s not acid free, or whatever whatever. But neither are the literal hundreds of my much-loved and read mass markets. And a ream of 500 sheets, delivered to pick up at my local Staples, cost half what a ream of not-quite-it from French would be. I figured, if it sucked for this particular need, I would enjoy having a bunch of drawing paper.

Because I have no chill, I opened the box in the parking lot. Having read many a book in the glaring Southern California sunshine, tiny black letters dancing in afterimage, I could tell right off that this was it.

Once home I ran a test print and under the warm house lights the vibes were even more spot on.

That second round of samples from French Paper are still wending their way toward me and I won’t be sad to have a more full understanding of The Nice Paper. However, every step of this latest fanbinding project has more and more solidly proved that this drawing paper is exactly what I’d been searching for.

Storytelling Collective does a yearly challenge for flash fic, with prompts and a nice community format. Every year I complete a run I pick my ten favourites and collect them into what is basically a zine. With 2025’s up, now it’s time to share some faves from 2024.

Then who slayed the dragon, exactly?

Well, Neihm landed the killing arrow in the beast’s throat, but it was the work of the group to give her that opportunity.

Okay, and this is the group you were the leader of for the past five years?

Yes, a really great team, I loved ensuring that they felt supported on missions.

And how did you do that?

Well, any real team leader doesn’t lead so much as they support the growth of the team, right? I listened to their needs, helped them identify growth opportunities, managed payroll so that they didn’t have to balance money worries while also fighting monsters, that sort of thing.

Ah.

I think really there’s nothing quite like seeing that the role somebody is in doesn’t fit their needs and working with them to figure out what will. Like our rogue, right? He actually started out as a wizard, but as we worked together, I realized that he had a great memory for spells but showed active curiosity in how locks and traps worked. So, I set up an apprenticeship for him, and that great memory served him very well when it came to traps and locks, plus his wizard background gave him a real edge in perception. Probably one of my most satisfying experiences with that team.

More so than, it looks like, overthrowing a demon lord?

Well, we wouldn’t have been able to do that if he hadn’t become a rogue. And same for the rest of the team, really. As a leader it was really just beautiful to see how much they’d all grown not only in their own skills but in how they worked together.

So, you feel that, as a leader, it’s not that your adventuring party supports you—

But that you support your adventuring party, exactly! And it’s not as though I think they don’t have my back. It can be tough to be ‘the face’ of a party, the hero, whatever. It’s you who has to interface with kings and merchants and whoever is footing the bill. And that can be stressful! But being the buffer between my team and the sometimes not quite reasonable demands of our employers is satisfying. And if things ever got rocky, I know they would be there to back me up.

When running your background check we did find that you had posted some inflammatory broadsides about a local prince?

Yes, I did. On researching his quest query, we discovered some pretty nefarious stuff and after discussion with the team we decided that supporting his opponent would be the best move. They ended up becoming a regular client of ours, actually.

I see. And what are you looking for in your position with us?

Oh, just fresh opportunity. Like I said, I really like supporting a team, and I enjoy the folks I work with but it’s only a small independent adventuring party. Working with a bigger team would be a really fun challenge that I think I’d excel at.

That’s great. And do you have any questions for us?

Yes! Did you know that the average retention rate for an adventure staffing company this size is something like 65%? Which isn’t bad, really, when you think about how volatile the industry is, but what’s really interesting is that if you remove all management above “hero” it drops to 50%? And then, if you also leave out the heroes it drops to 30%? That’s like, spectacularly bad. That indicates a real problem within the very structure of your company.

I don’t—

No, you don’t. But that’s okay! Because your current employees do. And they hired us, well actually we’re working pro-bono, but they hired us to shake up the management structure some and begin union negotiations. And what is really lovely about that is you have this big group of people who maybe 30%, 40% tops were going to finish out their year here, that’s how little they cared for your company, all joining together towards one common goal. So, the possibility of real cohesive and modular teams is there, you’re just not utilizing it. But that’s okay, we’re going to help you out. That’s what I love to do, help folks who need it. That’s what being a hero is.

I saw an engagement-type post recently that was like “what were you doing in 2008” and I went and looked at my Flickr, which I’ve kept since 2005 and works like a sort of backup memory for me.

In 2008 I’d been out of college for three years, was making a sculpture a day for a bit, went to Wyoming for the first time, tabled at a comics fest for the last time, and we paid $650 for a two bedroom apartment where I had an entire room just for craft and making things. This was also the year I first shaved the sides of my head, realised that less hair was much easier to deal with, and never looked back. I think I’d moved to full time at the job I’d hold until we left Oregon completely (a horrible job but one that cemented my logistics and spreadsheet real-world experience, moulding me into the mix of product management wetworks I am today).

The key thing is though, I was still making minicomics and zines. As my life became one that included 20-24 hours of commute a week, I started writing more and reading lots (thank you, Project Gutenberg) and comics didn’t like, fall by the wayside but they faded out like all the little guys in Labyrinth at the end. It’s not like I stopped doing comics but I did stop printing them out or doing anything with them. I still had a long-arm stapler though.

And I did keep buying zines (I’ve even had subscriptions to some!) and have enjoyed watching the push and pull of “zine” changing from “thing I photocopied” to “nice printed and bound thing” while also seeing the return of the good ol’ one page zine.

Eventually, I got (back) into bookbinding, via fanbinding. Specifically, fanbinding fic I’d written with a friend of OCs from our D&D game. Bookbinding is fun as hell but sometimes you want something a little faster, which is where pamphlet binding comes in. Last winter I made my family group pamphlet books of short stories only available online. A pamphlet bind is like a high-end zine, tbh. Sewn instead of staples.

What’s funny is, through all of this, I’ve always laid out my various ebooks, like my flash fiction collections the same way you lay things out to be printed. I could not tell you why, tbh. Then I encountered a post by veronique about the joy of zines and turning ephemeral/digital things like blog posts into zines.

“Well dang, wait,” I thought, “that would be so easy to do.” I did still have that long arm stapler.

And so, here’s the past four years of Flash Fiction February collections, in physical form.

It’s wild how much more real this very real amount of work (daily writing, editing, illustrations, laying out the text block) feels in a physical form.

They do feel more like a “chapbook” than a zine though. So I tried laying out the first two essays from my newsletter, along with the pictures and book recommendations. It worked out swimmingly, and I then filled the two blank pages at the end with puzzles.

I don’t know what I am going to do with these? LAPL actually has a robust zine collection and maybe I’ll whack out a bunch of the FFF collections and send those in? Maybe I don’t need to do anything with them right now, maybe it’s just the joy of making. I have a bunch more newsletter essays that I can lay out and print out and be delighted by.

Storytelling Collective does a yearly challenge for flash fic, with prompts and a nice community format. Every year I complete a run I pick my ten favourites and collect them into what is basically a zine. With 2025’s up, now it’s time to share some faves from 2024.

Seb held up his hand and felt Aurok gently run into it. The small bird nibbled softly at the back of his hand before turning around and patting away. Turning his attention back to the parchment, Seb dipped his pen and continued outlining the flowers framing the verse. Although he liked adding the colours as well, Seb enjoyed this step the most, feeling the sweep of his pen follow twining stems. He was not so entranced by the process to miss the tapping sound of Aurok returning.

With the deftness of practice, Seb caught the bird before it closed in on the parchment. Aurok peeped cheerfully, nodding its head to duck within the warm cage of Seb’s curled fingers. Knowing what came next, the scribe hastily cleaned his pen and set it aside before placing the bird back onto the desk, an arm’s length from his workspace.

Merrily, Aurok strode toward the parchment. Seb caught it up again, the bird giving a high flute of excitement. Back to the scarred wood of the table, the bird’s steps jauntier, eager for the next part of the game. Once more Seb scooped up the bird, adding a small swoop to the path of his hand as he returned Aurok to its starting point. They repeated this cycle several times, until Aurok nipped Seb’s finger in a clear declaration of the end of the game.

Seb returned to his work and Aurok returned to its current project of tearing apart an old rag. Without interruptions, the outlining was done quickly. Seb tidied his workspace to make room for the paints. Seeing Aurok well occupied with its rag, he turned around to fill a dish with water.

The pleasant sound of splashing covered the noise of any crimes, and Seb turned back to the desk to see Aurok halfway across the parchment, the dainty claws of its feet leaving a trail through the not fully dried ink.

There was mercy in heaven, Seb thought, for Aurok’s path had not crossed the careful script of the verse. Quietly, he set the dish of water down and closed the distance to the desk. Aurok, focused on its quest, ignored him as it rummaged between the assorted jars and containers that accumulated on any working surface. Smoothly and swiftly, Seb’s hand darted out and captured the bird. Aurok showed no distress at this, nor in Seb wiping its feet, as it was far too engrossed in prising out the meat of a walnut half. Seb could not remember when he had last eaten walnuts and resolved that in the future he would pick up and wipe under the things on his desk rather than sweeping around them.

Its prize obtained, Aurok expressed no further interest in crossing Seb’s desk. The scribe spent the rest of the daylight incorporating Aurok’s inky steps into the design. The end result, he had to admit, was quite harmonious.

It’s difficult, to get back into the specific habit of blogging. I mean I do it – I “microblog” on Tumblr and I’m so far sticking well to my goal of weekly updates at Comradery and Patreon. Even my newsletter is kind of bloggy. But beyond that, it was a habit I kind of lost when I left LiveJournal, to a degree. My problem, I think partly, is I always want to cite lots of sources or have a ~reason~ for a post. Which is silly! I like posts that are just little life updates or complaints or stories or whatever whatever. And not just from others, I mean I also like stumbling across the ones I’ve written myself.

Anyway right now I’m in the middle of Flash Fiction February, as held by Storytelling Collective, I guess this is the fourth year I’ve really gone for it, though I’d picked at it previously. In 2022 I got an AlphaSmart and it helped me re-focus how I was going about things. Here’s a little video from then of how it works.

This year though, I’m typing on the computer, specifically in Ellipsus, because they have a very sexy little snippet you can do now and that’s fun. The always wonderful Zilla Novikov (who wrote Query, which you should read) does a “post the first line in your WIP” on Tumblr that I enjoy and don’t partake in enough, and I figured the snippets would be a good way to do that.

In 2023 I made a spreadsheet (of course I did) to track the prompts, word count and genre of what I was writing and to better note what should go in the collection I put together for each year (find them over on Itch, they’ve illustrations and everything). It’s a nice way to see, with these little bits of story that are like working in a sketchbook, what I keep returning too. Here’s a snapshot of where I am for this month, which is generated from daily entries. If the genre-description-type thing doesn’t make sense to you that’s fine, I mean this is more for me.

It is difficult to balance working in a lot of media. While I’m writing I’m also (supposed to be) shooting some stickers to finally get them in the shop, working on some sculptures, finishing a quilt, mending my coat, etc etc etc. But that’s life! I dunno! It’s how its always been. Finding a balance, sticking to the to-do lists that keep me on track without putting me in a rut, building new habits or rebuilding old ones.

Like blog posts without a point, really. Other than saying “I’m here! I’m here please!” Which are good posts to have and to see and to make.

As I posted earlier, I did some pamphlet binds of short stories for family gifts this year. Pamphlet sewing is my comfort craft, tbh. It’s always satisfying, easy to play with form, just a delight up and down. If you missed the earlier post check it out here.

Which is good because I had to make a grip of them in a week (I put things off a touch). I had done a very niche bind in a set of three as more specific presents, then realised I should just indulge myself and do something similar for everyone. You can get a peek of what the initial bind was here, but it will get its own post.

All this talk of pamphlet binding and this first one isn’t that. It’s three signatures, with a soft cover. I selected three favourite trope-based stories and wrapped them in the brightest dang red I have tried to photograph. The illustrations for each section I drew myself based off of images found in Wikimedia Commons.

The stories are:

• Getaway by Nicole Kornher-Stace, time loop
• If We Survive the Night by Carlie St. George, final girl
• Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole by Isabel J. Kim – what it says on the tin

One of the fun things with this project was thinking about what story would make someone the happiest – what they’d read and loved or had never read and might love. For this friend, I couldn’t think of a better match than Pockets by Amal El–Mohtar. The images were sourced from Wikimedia Commons, coloured with watercolour pencil and gold pen.

This one I haven’t mailed yet because first: I always mess up this person’s address somehow and USPS will say they don’t know where that is. And second: because we are very close to one of the big LA County fires and our power has been out and schedules disarrayed. Elves in Illinois by Sarah J. Wu is a true delight and the length pushes the appropriateness of pamphlet sewing.

This searingly bright bind is a fanfic for a very specific ship, if you have AO3, def kudos All The Things You Are by bossbeth, this is just chapter one.

Okay, I’ll get to the bind that started it all next. These were such a joy to make, there’s something very magical about being able to hold something in your hands you otherwise can only access on your phone.

I am very excited about this! This is my first year doing Yultide and I am going to be over the moon about anything you write for me. I am fine with all POVs, tenses, unusual formats and ratings. I tend to like short fic, but also I just like to read stories <3

My AO3 name is also bzedan, and I am always open to treats.

I love (and I don't even know how relevant these are to my requested fandoms, I'm just sharing vibes): found family, hurt-comfort, guard dog relationships, loyalty, praise-kink, epistolatory fiction or anything related (transcripts! snippets of archived materials!), queer characters, purple prose and excessive scene and food description, worldbuilding, goofy metaphors and similies, domestic cosiness, animals and nature, "one last job" or "we gotta save the barn!" situations, second chances, time loops, fingers in the mouth.

I'm totally fine with: canon-typical violence, gore, 'depressing' existential concepts, horror/creepiness, emotional loss, change-the-setting/time AUs.

General DNWs: pregnancy of any type or stage (one exception, which is noted in the relevant fandom), death of requested characters who don't die in canon, real-life current political figures, explicit non-con, beastiality, child/adult sex, fecal play,

Chronicles of Amicae - Mirah Bolender

Canon-specific DNW: Current enslavement, but passing mention of past enslavement okay

Listen, I know this is a hard series to get hold of. I'll take any domestic moment or fight scene or worldbuilding about any of the characters. I'm a big ol' sucker for how the main three (Laura Kramer, Clae Sinclair, Okane Sinclair) interact and the family they've created, but I also love basically everyone else in the series. Heck, if you feel wild enough to delve into the Hive-Mind, I'd love to see it.

The Mechanic (2011)

My gift must feature one or more of my chosen character tags (giver's choice): Arthur Bishop, Steve McKenna

No canon-specific DNW

Love these boys, both alone and together. I'd be happy with anything from a grumpy morning over coffee to them pulling a wetworks job to an explicit scene of them fulfilling a different kind of (wet) job. The things that particularly endear me to them is the reluctance to acknowledge their mentor-protégé relationship that is almost knight/squire in depth.

I'm okay with Steve's death in canon (even though I'm also a fan of the alternate universe - canon divergence where he lives) and Arthur dealing with how he feels after that could be interesting!

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (TV)

My gift must feature all of my chosen character tags; or it may use exceptions I explain in the form: Keiko Miura, Leland "Lee" Shaw, William "Bill" J. Randa - my exception is if the story has only one or two of them actively/physically in the story, but the three of them are still romantically together.

Exception/Explanation for character tags: I would like everyone in the monster-hunting throuple

No canon-specific DNW

DNW Exception: If any of the kaiju/monsters/titans is gravid and it is approached in a not overly-biologically descriptive way, like how a farm handles livestock being pregnant or how people are when their cat is going to have kittens. I know that the very first entry in the Monsterverse showed some pretty gratuitous egg-laying, but in context really no weirder than Attenborough nature docs.

Listen, I am here for the monster-hunting throuple. I love them, I love their dynamic, both in the field and at home. I think about how possibly maybe they could still all be together even after the events of season one (even if one of them got eaten by a Skullcrawler). I think about how they have each had to mourn the loss of the other two pieces of their heart at different times. I love them!

One of the most wonderful things about living in Los Angeles is the sheer variety of produce available at local supermarkets. Oregon was rich in berries and always had a good general selection, but seeing jackfruit, mangos and papaya just sitting next to bananas at Vons (the local version of a Safeway) is a special kind of experience.

The most exciting fruit so far—because I haven’t got the courage to try a jackfruit yet—has been the papaya. I’ve enjoyed papaya juice for a long time, thanks to an everlasting love of P.O.G., but hadn’t encountered the fruit in person. First, they’re huge, with a lot of the Mexican papayas weighing up to ten pounds. For an example, the much smaller papaya I recently picked up was enough for a snack, a smoothie the next day and well, a lot more than that. The big papayas offer about double the amount of fruit.

There’s a meatiness to papaya fruit that is reminiscent of a more sturdy melon and they’re juicier than you can imagine, which can lead to quite a delicious mess. Slicing off their rind feels a lot like fileting a chicken breast or taking the skin off a fish, with the same slippery worry that you’ll nick your hand.

Their flavour that ranges from peppery to musky, depending on the breed, which makes papayas amazing in everything from salads to smoothies—or just straight out of a bowl with a little Tajin. They’re better than any P.O.G. or Kerns Nectar could have prepared me for.

Papaya seeds are also a lot more intimidating and interesting than the little black specks on a juice bottle convey. The first papaya I picked up was packed with seeds, just cups of slightly squishy, alien-looking little things. I’d read they were edible, with a taste like mustard, black pepper and horseradish, which sparked my curiosity.

I ended up being a little overwhelmed by the idea of processing so many seeds and composted them, swearing the next papaya seeds would get dried and used. Imagine my surprise when I picked up the next papaya, a Hortus Gold, and found barely any seeds inside.

Even though I was disappointed after the previous seed bounty, for a first-time experience, it ended up being the perfect amount of seeds. As I learned a helpful post on Spruce Eats, the fleshy covering of the seeds should be removed before drying them. This is a sticky operation, but rubbing them between layers of paper towel first cuts down on the number of little seed skins that end up stuck to your hand as you pop them out of their skins.

The seeds themselves have tiny bristles and hooks and look less like alien things and more like the briars that stick to your socks in late summer.

Although there are a lot of blog posts out there saying papaya seeds can be dried in the oven “at low heat,” nobody really seems to be giving an exact time it takes. I’m sure it varies, but for a handful of seeds, I was able to get them dry enough to grind in about an hour at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

The dried papaya seeds ground incredibly easily with a mortar and pestle, leaving me with about a teaspoon of softly peppery powder that will be a perfect topping with some crema on corn.

The drying and roasting process takes a lot of the mustard and horseradish flavour away from the seeds, which is a pity. I suppose I’ll need to hope the next papaya I pick up is more generous with its seeds because I can’t wait to try them raw.

Mirrored from B.Zedan.