Pretzel Lectern Essays, vol. 1

About six months ago, I designed and laid out this book for my print design course in college. I was going to get it printed professionally, but I got lazy and never got around to it. So instead, when my wife got some free Shutterfly book codes, I made it using their website. Worst. Site. Ever. I understand they're meant to make photo books and not text-based books like I wanted, but some of their features (or lack thereof) were inexcusable—no text styles, no automated page numbers . . . oh well.

At any rate, it was fun to practice laying out books. I got an old version of InDesign, so it'll be fun to be able to know how to lay out my own personal publications in the future, such as Alfred and the Cavern of Time (coming hopefully within a year from now, and it'll actually be purchasable, print on demand), my personal history (I'm going to start working on it soon), and perhaps transcriptions of my journals, old writing projects, or other texts for posterity.

The back cover's color scheme got really jacked up, and of course the spine ended up looking crappy. Oh well.

Even though I own the only copy of this book, I simply chose my favorite essays here on Pretzel Lectern as the main text inside. The essays included are

• The Year
• The Tale of the Phoenix Suns Coat
• Creative Writing Inspiration
• A Mowing Veteran Retires
• The Final Age
• The Magic of Disney (renamed "What Makes Disney So Incredible")

I originally had Quite Small Tales and The Planet "Dirt" included, but they didn't fit in the finished product. It did have a Foreword written by Robert Strobel, my cousin who is co-writing Alfred and the Cavern of Time and whose blog, The Whited Wall, is featured in the Affiliates section at your bottom right.

Anyway, good practice for publishing and laying out books, which is what I'll be doing professionally once I find a job and start building a résumé. It's that time of life.

Thanks for visiting Pretzel Lectern! If you want your own copy of this book (indeed, a better copy, since it was the original layout without Shutterfly's madness), here, have a free PDF.