Howling at the Moon - a proposal

Once upon a time, fairytales were –quite literally- the stuff of legend. They were the stories of the gods and the mortals, hovering about that limenal space between the two, and nearly always verging on the terrible. And they were fascinating, at least to me.
Then, somewhere along the line, the magic fell out of them. The children escaped the oven; the wolf spit out the grandmother whole; and Disney got so concerned with their “G” rating that they all lived happily ever after.
Yet it is still these tales that stick with us, that tell us to avoid the woods alone after dark or to open our eyes if the President is parading around in the buff. These tales are quite often the impetus to every story ever told, in some form or another. In thinking through this, I really began to embrace the idea of retelling these tales. I considered what it was about them that made me so enamored with their narratives, where it was that that moment of magic really occurred. Thus I began to produce work dealing with these themes.
“Abbaiare All Luna” –Howl at the Moon- “in Dm for Flute” takes a less traditional approach to the telling of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, but still turns it a bit on its heels. The story, borrowing a bit in style from traditional fairytale narrative but succinctly set within the “modern,” follows a young David Sheridan through his childhood and well into adulthood as his knack for canines and fluid fluting produce a peculiar turn of events for the young chap. Without becoming too heavy-handed, one could even conclude that the piper of the piece welcomes back the snakes and rats while forsaking the children once more.
The story has previously been published as an addendum to Roast, but I really feel it deserves its own binding and a very particular layout that the previous collection of short stories could not offer.

For this presentation of “Abbaiare,” existing in a limited run of twenty-five books, the story would unfold in such a manner as to be reminiscent of the illustrated editions of the tales of the Brothers Grimm and the Little Golden Books most Americans can recall from their childhood. I feel the combination of these styles speaks to the theme and approach of the text itself: verging on the sweetly saccharine renditions of “Little Engines” and puppies who fancy themselves pokey with a wallop of the terrible fury present within the olden texts of lore. With full-color covers presented alternately on green, blue, and cream colored cardstock and black and white internal text featuring silhouetted figures that cater to the tale, “Abbaiare All Luna in Dm for Flute” will weigh in at twenty pages sized 5x7”. Gold drafters tape will line the spine of the book, reinforcing the cover and hiding the binding.

The internal pages of the book will be created with Adobe InDesign while the exterior front and back covers will be created with Adobe Photoshop. The twenty-five books will be produced via a photocopier with binding done by hand.
The internal text layout has already been completed. Lime Glory Caps, a font with a gentle flourish, is used to accentuate the opening paragraph of each page, with Modern No. 20 used as the main body text. This provides a glimpse of the vintage fairytale in conjunction with a modern font that is easy-to-read.

As the project needs to reach its culmination by Friday, the work is already underway. As I am not blessed with a hand for drawing, the images used have been collected from free-use and copyright free sources, and will be further tweaked through Photoshop before entering the document. This will be completed by Tuesday evening.
Enough binding supplies for fifteen copies have been previously purchased. I will buy the remaining supplies needed (ten pages of cover cardstock) Tuesday afternoon. Tuesday night I will utilize the 24-hour Kinkos a few blocks from my house to print the first test of the internal text. If all goes well, this will enable me to produce the copies necessary in a matter of minutes. If there are issues, I will have Wednesday morning to produce the necessary changes before returning to print again on Wednesday night. As the pages will be printed on 8.5x11 paper, I will be able to use the guillotine cutter on-hand at the shop to trim the half inch from each side. This will give the pages the appearance of “full-bleed” and position them slightly smaller than my covers. It will also save me time post-binding, as I will only need to do a limited amount of cutting with a hand-held blade to ensure straight pages.
Thursday will be dedicated to finishing the binding on each book and applying the gold tape to the spine.
Friday, the book will be ready for presentation.