Oh yes, here is the sun and here is the outside and oh my, here is another room other than my study where I can spend some time now that last week is over. I have been typesetting Sexton Blake, all 768 pages of it.

It started out life as a selection of hundreds of PDF scans done by editor George Mann and wonderful Sexton Blake fan Mark Hodder like this:

Guess how we got them into indesign. Go on, guess. Yep, we typed them out. And when I say we, of course I mean not me. We attempted OCRing first but the quality of the originals was just too low, so, deadlines looming, we made a new plan.

Firstly Mark Hodder did an astonishing amount in a handful of weeks. Then, his fingers bloody stumps, he went on holiday so my amazing sister in law (who also cut my hair, multitalented lass that she is) took over. Then time was running out so I used Elance, which was ok except the first provider bit off more than she could chew and the second sneakily OCRed much of it, meaning I had to spend all week editing out nonsense. I think it would have been marginally quicker to type it myself, in hindsight.

It has been a major task and I'm pleased with the result. Can't wait to show you the finished piece as the stories really are amazing. In fact I'll be sharing one on White Magazine's newsletter later on today.