Faerie Queene Progress
11 months ago – Fri, Jan 05, 2024 at 08:06:13 AM

Happy New Year to all! 

I'm pleased to update you with news that we will soon progress to typesetting! Once we cross that threshold, our content decisions will be complete, and we will transition to decisions about font type, font size, and the formatting of headings and footnotes.

In general, we have followed the Chicago Manual of Style for this project, though we have intentionally chosen a few stylistic variations to increase readability. And, we are hoping the typesetter can help us make a few lingering decisions--particularly decisions about our hierarchy of headings. (If anyone needs a band name, Hierarchy of Headings is up for grabs.)

My publisher and I both love the look and feel of Baum's first edition Sea Faeries (1911) and Sky Island  (1912). I don't think I've ever held more pleasant books in my hand than those two. Their size, weight, and balance is perfection. Don't even get me started on the feel and smell of the paper. 

However, we will have a lot more content than Baum, so I'm doubtful we can make that exact size work with a font size that is pleasant to read. Still, the closer we can get to that feeling, the happier we will be. 

I'll keep you updated as the next steps progress. Thank you for walking on this journey with us!

Rebecca

A Holiday Card for Gift Giving
11 months ago – Wed, Dec 20, 2023 at 06:48:59 AM

We received a wonderful question a few days ago. Someone asked if we would be providing a card for those who would like to use their purchase as a holiday gift. I wish we had thought of this sooner because there's not time now to print and mail these to you. However, we can offer a few holiday cards that you can print at home. So, I'm attaching a preview of three cards below, and here is a link where you can download these to print. (Just click the little down arrow circled in red here.)

Editing is going so, so well. There's a very good chance we will be done with all the edits by the end of January, now. I'm blown away by the faithful devotion of the editor who is pulling the final steps together for us. She has worked relentlessly, and her expertise is such a boon.

Thank you again for your help with this endeavor. We wish you the Merriest of Christmases followed by a peaceful, cozy beginning to 2024.

Cheers,

Rebecca

CARD ONE

CARD TWO

CARD THREE

An answer to a solid question about the project, and a peek behind-the-scenes.
about 1 year ago – Sun, Nov 26, 2023 at 10:15:25 AM

I promise not to flood you with daily updates, but we had a question show up in our comments yesterday, and I thought you'd find the answer interesting. I also wanted to share a bit of the backstory of one of the creators for this project. (I love getting to watch behind-the-scenes documentaries about the lives of people driving creative endeavors, don't you?) I'll start with the backstory.

A BACKSTORY

This Faerie Queene project would have never reached the public eye if it weren't for two friends of who championed the work in different ways. Jon Morris is one of those friends. He trusted me to do this work with Sky Turtle, and he's invested highly to make sure it comes to fruition. I take that investment seriously. 

The other friend who made this dream a reality is Steve Smith. Five years ago, I was standing in a grocery parking lot talking to Steve about an audiobook I was recording, and I said something like: "You know, I spent today teaching The Faerie Queene to ninth graders. It's such a brilliant set of stories. Someday I'd love to offer this poem in a text-faithful prose rendering, but that would be a massive endeavor." 

I would have let that dream go, but Steve wouldn't let me. He found all sorts of ways to make sure it happened, and he also introduced me to Kickstarter! This is embarrassing to admit now, but I fought so hard not to launch the project here. I just didn't understand the platform. I'd seen the brutality of the internet, and I had no idea how wonderful you all would be, offering your encouragement and excitement. 

Steve knew better because he had already done one Kickstarter of his own, funding a translation of a famous graphic novel series called The Obscure Cities. He knew first-hand how great this community could be. The Obscure Cities are written and illustrated by a famous Belgian/French team François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters. (If you click on those names, I think you'll be super impressed. :))

Anyway, Steve actually won an illustrious Eisner Award last year for the best translation of foreign material. This is like winning a Grammy in the graphic novel industry! The whole Obscure Cities series is delightful, and what could very well be the last book happens to be about Steve's heroes Captain Nemo and Jules Verne. 

Steve's new Verne project will be on Kickstarter for the next ten hours or so, if you want to use this platform to watch some videos and  learn more about the creator behind the creator, now's the time to do it. This isn't an advertisement, of course. I just think the quality of my Faerie Queene project will make more sense when you see the quality of the illustrations and the construction of Steve's work on this project. This is the sort of support I've had, all along the way. I haven't had to advocate for excellence like a lot of creators do. He just gets it.

A QUESTION RELATED TO PRODUCTION

Yesterday someone asked a solid question about whether we could go ahead and start layout for Volume I while finishing edits for Volumes II and II. We definitely could, were it not for a few universal edits that must be solidified before sending to print.

For example, a few weeks ago, we decided to go back and include the book and canto numbers of the first appearance of every character in our main character lists. This will allow readers to find the introduction of those characters in the original text more easily. So, we will need to go back and add these to Volumes I and II.

We are also making some revisions in regard to how we handle capitalization. Words like "Fortune" and "Justice" are not consistently capitalized in the original text. Because these words are also personified in characters at times, we have gone back and forth about when to use caps and when to use lowercase. Sometimes Spenser seems to be playing on a double meaning, which makes such choices particularly complex. I've had new talks with my new editor about this recently, and we will be going back through all the volumes to make a few changes.

A third complexity—Spenser uses phrases and constructions that I want readers to understand in their original form by the end of the third volume; but, deciding when to introduce them is a bit challenging. Today we were making a decision about an idiom containing the word “gall.” I wanted to keep the old form because this was late in Volume III, and I love Spenser's language, but I also wanted to search Volumes I and II to make sure this was the best place. So, I did a universal search for “gall,” both in the original text and in my manuscript. Here’s where it got tricky, though. One of the main characters is named Artegall. So, instead of sifting through just five uses, I’m sifting through over three hundred uses in both my texts and the original documents, searching for “gall” but not “Artegall.”

So many little situations like this have arisen, we’ve decided to hold off on final layouts until the text is done. I am encouraged, however, that my massive list of things to check and tweak is shrinking. I marked through two pages of "to do's" in my notebook yesterday! I can see the light at the end of the tunnel! :)

Thanks so much for all your excitement and support! (And that thanks extends to Jon and Steve. When I called them "dream makers" in my Kickstarter video, I wasn't exaggerating. I'm so grateful.)

 Rebecca

Late November Update
about 1 year ago – Sat, Nov 25, 2023 at 09:27:30 AM

'Just a quick late November update here.

Wonderful progress is being made on the books. I spent three hours this morning working through Volume III suggestions from our final copy and content editor. Her PhD is such a boon to this whole endeavor! 

We are currently working inside of a shared text program that allows us to quickly see how many unresolved comments are left for each volume. It's been encouraging to see those numbers going steadily down from 500 to 300 to 70 to 6. 

Our present goal is to finish all copy editing by the end of December. After we complete this step, I'll print out the massive stack of pages and read straight through, hoping to catch any lingering missed errors that I didn't see on the computer screen. Though we have used five qualified humans and one AI program to scan and search for grammatical mistakes, weird oversights can still happen. (And by the way, after you receive the books, if you do find either content or grammatical errors, would please let us know so we can correct them in any reprints? We'll have a form on our main website that allows you to reach out to us.)

After editing is finally done, the books will go to layout and print. Layout might take a bit longer than normal because the content is massive and includes many illustrations as well as footnotes. But, I'm hoping for a release date in the Spring?

 Thanks again for all your support. We are so looking forward to holding the completed books in our hands. We know you are, too!

With gratitude,

Rebecca Reynolds

November Update
about 1 year ago – Fri, Nov 03, 2023 at 10:03:05 AM

Want an ugly look behind the scenes of this project? 

This is the notebook in which my current Faerie Queene to-do lists are kept. Because we have been advancing different volumes simultaneously, notes like these have been essential. (And this is actually my third notebook for this project!)

I've loved leaning on our new editor (the one with the PhD in medieval literature) for textual advice. It's been wonderful to have access to her expertise at this stage of the process, as my eyes keep catching phrases that I want to hash through one more time. She's also catching lines we need to revisit as she works through more basic copyediting.

Her experience as a teacher is also a tremendous boon. (I'll explain why in long form below, but if you opened this message just looking for a quick update, feel free to stop reading now. :)

__

All along, my dream has been to create hybrid genre--books with just a taste of academic criticism, a touch of teacherly guidance, and gorgeous illustrations. This vision has been difficult to describe, as most books seem to be written for either pleasure or scholarship. But there's a personal reason I want these books to be different.

When I was younger, I spent many years studying entomology. (Yes, insects.) Because of that focus, I didn't have much exposure to the literary world. 

I read books all the time, and I loved words. But I didn't know anything about how literary criticism worked, and I'd never had a teacher who took the time to slowly unpack poetry or prose for me. Because of this, I lived with a sort of loneliness that I couldn't even identify clearly.

I still love science, but I will never forget the day I sat in my first college literature class. The professor began explaining a line from a Keats poem, and my heart started to pound. I hadn't known to even dream that there were people in the world who cared about studying words so deeply. 

The focus on listening was most striking to me. I was accustomed to quick, economical exchanges of information--so this was completely different. This involved listening, and listening, and listening. It meant standing in patient humility, receiving another person's ideas, and looking at those ideas thoughtfully from all sorts of perspectives. 

I went to the registrar that day and changed my major. Whatever this was, I needed it. I had no idea what job I would do, I just knew I couldn't live without being a part of this world.

Because literary studies were new to me, I had a lot of catching up to do. But the English department at my college was the sort movies are made of. They hosted evening meetings in their homes, fed us, encouraged us to write, received our writing with respect and careful feedback--all while droving us to read and think deeply. They shepherded us in ways that can still bring tears to my eyes. 

They also introduced me to "the stacks," the hundreds of shelves of academic journals that were (at the time) still printed on paper. You know how delicious a library smells, so I don't have to describe that to you. But hauling those massive volumes to a study table, and tracing down essays that professors had spent their lives writing changed me. I realized I had a community of souls spanning centuries. Their analysis showed me I wasn't alone.

ALL THIS TO SAY . . . when you receive your copy of The Faerie Queene, you will notice a few scattered footnotes. These footnotes don't work like they would in an academic paper. They aren't intended to be comprehensive.  They are meant to be teasers, a trail of breadcrumbs left for those who either don't know this world of slow listening exists, or who need that realm as badly as I do. And, because my  new editor is also a teacher, she gets that. I'm so thankful for her.

Thanks to you all for being patient as we wrap this up. We are making such progress! It's wonderful to see it all coming together.

Rebecca