Moving right along, and answering questions.

I’ve finished the first panel. I’ve drafted out the motto and it’s obviously in process, too. What you see here is just the second half of the phrase. The first half will go above the completed strip, but I have room to add this part without advancing the scroll, so I am doing it first. And here are some details which should help folk looking for more info.

I am using a combo of two alphabets available on the Patternmaker Charts blog site, established by Ramzi, and apparently now maintained by helpers as well. The bolder upper case letters are from Sajou Booklet #004, but I tweaked them slightly for greater twinkle and depth. I am after all honoring yet another science fiction book by my Resident Male is currently writing. Starlight is appropriate. The lower case alphabet does not line up exactly with the upper case one in terms of spacing and ornament, but again, it has twinkle. It’s from the same site, but appears in Sajou #007. The site has been up for a very long time, and the interface is clunky to navigate but the content is priceless. Booklets indicated by asterisks contain line drawn material. No asterisks means the content is charted.

How did I know to use these together? Guesswork, and reaching way back to being a little kid. My grandfather owned a contract print and engraving shop in the pre-photocopy era. He produced catalogs, advertising material, magazines, books, stock certificates, menus, and lots of other printed matter. While it’s obvious that I didn’t follow him into the family business, I was a curious little thing, and he was happy to show me the fun of type faces, font sizes, leading, kerning, and the way that different typesetting choices and physical presentation can change the way a message is perceived. With his paper samples and layout guides, I always had the wildest written report covers in grade school.

Maybe a little bit stuck from those chats, and from going through his printed examples because I still quest for just the right thing when I compose my motto-bearing pieces. Sometimes I hit the mark, sometimes not. But to this day I always learn from the hunt and the exercise.

What’s the next panel after the words are completed? Something totally new. I’m web-walking looking for Azammour Cluster pieces I haven’t seen before. There are more than there were just three years ago, because the fragments in museum and private hands are being re-evaluated, and the turn-of-the-1900s identifications as Renaissance era snippets sold to collector/tourists are being updated. I’ve found a couple of very interesting ones featuring motifs other than the usual meandering repeats or birds. Charting now. Slowly. Reveal when I have more to show, of course.

And what is the full text of the motto?

Anything Could Happen
Anything Often Does

This can be read in a few different ways. First and foremost is that it is a direct quotation from The Hungry Judges, the novel currently in development, and central to the plot stream.

Yet at the same time, I can see it as a summary statement of my former professional career in engineering/high-tech bids and proposals. That was an endless parade of short term crisis containment and contingency planning – managing overburdened teams striving to meet unrealistic deadlines, spiced with technical requirements that were not always feasible within performance constraints. But I never missed an on-time submission in 42 years, had an enviable win rate, and emerged without ulcers.

And lastly of course, it does echo my current medical predicament. My malady is not something pegged to known statistical associations with genetics, environmental or exposure factors, stress, or lifestyle. Chordoma is so rare that triggers are not understood, yet appears to be a totally random reactivation of the extremely small number of dormant stem cells that everyone retains along their spinal column, going back to our embryonic origins. What wakes them up is a medical mystery.

With my typical attack optimism, I am planning on outlasting this wack-a-mole recurrence, and with radiation and other modalities, continued vigilance and via several promising avenues of targeted antibody and other “lullaby” treatments, return them to secure slumber.