After a brief hiatus, welcome to another installment of Inside the Author’s Studio, where we give you a peek into the minds and studios of your favorite Workman authors.

Today, in anticipation of the gift-giving holidays (what else?!), we venture into the studio of Mike Vago, author of  The Miniature Book of Miniature Golf and The Pocket Book of Pocket Billiards for some delightful Q&A, speed-round-style.

Recent book you loved/learned from

Loved: Lev Grossman’s The Magicians and The Magician King. The series gets tagged as “Harry Potter for Grownups,” because it’s about a kid who goes to school to learn magic. But he’s a teenager, with all the self-involvement, pettiness, shortsightedness and drama that goes along with that. So the enemy isn’t a Voldemort-type figure as much as it’s the hero’s tendency to sabotage all of the relationships in his life. It’s hard to create a hero who’s basically unlikeable for most of the story and make you want to keep reading, but Grossman pulls it off in the first book, and then improves on that in every way in the second.

Learned from: Malcolm Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw. Gladwell can write on something as simple as why there are lots of brands of mustard and only one major brand of ketchup, and make it something profound and engrossing.

Favorite bookstore

Books of Wonder on 18th St. in Manhattan. My kids are 3 and 6, so a bookstore devoted solely to children’s books is a great place to spend a rainy afternoon. I’m also fascinated by pop-up books, and they have the biggest selection I’ve ever seen. And they have a cupcake bakery in the store. Books and cupcakes? That’s pretty much all I need out of life.

Hidden talent

I am the best fantasy sports commissioner in America.  I have a football league that’s been going since 1988, and I have a league that combines football, baseball, basketball and hockey into one wondrous, all-consuming monstrosity. In both cases, I don’t use Yahoo or some other fantasy sports web site – I input the stats by hand, because my scoring system is better than theirs.

Bookmark, dog-ear, or virtuality?

I tend to use the receipt from the book as a bookmark, which has the unintended side effect of reminding me, weeks or months later, of where I was and what I was doing when I bought the book, which is kind of nice. But I tend to move back and forth between dead trees and the Kindle. I love browsing in bookstores, but I also loved being in rural Ireland, probably an hour’s drive from the nearest bookstore, sitting outside in the middle of a field, and buying another book in 30 seconds because I had just finished one.  I don’t think one’s going to replace the other; I think we now have different options that each have their own advantages.

Book you are most ashamed never to have read

I know I should be most ashamed at never having read Hemingway, or Faulkner, or the many classics I managed to get an English Lit degree without reading. But at the moment it’s No Country For Old Men. I love McCarthy, I desperately want to see the Coen Brothers’ film, but I want to wait until I’ve read the book, and I keep putting it off for no good reason.

Most frequent form of writerly procrastination

Mostly reading. Let’s just say that being able to access the entirety of human knowledge on the internet is both a blessing and a curse.

Favorite childhood book

Every day after lunch, my 4th grade teacher read us The Book of Three, the first book of Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain. When we got to the end, I decided I was going to read the rest of the series myself, and that’s really what got me reading in a serious way. I had always been a big reader, but that was the start of having favorite authors and tearing through everything they had written, which I still do.

Alternate ambition (i.e. If you weren’t an author/Workman studio guru, you’d be…)

I ran my college radio station, and then an internet radio station for about 7 years, and long dreamed of being able to do that for a living. And my unrealistic career choice after college was music critic.  I quickly learned that neither of those are real jobs for more than maybe 5 people in America each.  So now my unrealistic goal is to be the person who picks the songs for movies, which is also only a real job for about 5 people.

Your perfect meal

I’ve been to the South maybe three times in my life, but I’m hooked on the food.  Fried catfish, garlic mashed potatoes, greens, cornbread, fried apples, crawfish pie (which is impossible to get, post-Katrina and BP) and some sweet tea.  Lucky for me, there are plenty of Southern transplants who have opened restaurants in New York.

Big dream

My wife’s from Ireland, so I’d love to have a house here and one there.  Or if I’m dreaming big, the top floor of the Chrysler Building here, and an 800-year-old castle there.

Super power of choice

Being able to fly.  Apart from anything else, it would make getting home from work so much easier.

If you could miniaturize any other game or sporting event (with a limitless production budget), what would it be?

The big problem I encountered when trying to develop a sequel for The Miniature Book of Miniature Golf is that most sports are played in the same place. Every football game is played on an identical regulation field, so what do you put on page two? Golf lends itself to a book well, because every course has 18 different chapters to it, in a sense, and no two courses are the same. So I developed an idea for a Miniature Book of Real Golf, with different heights of “grass” for the rough, the fairway, and the green. The tallest grass was tall enough that you could tee off from it, you could hit the ball into the air, and it would take about 4 shots to get across the course, just like it would for one of the pros. But for that to work, the book was 10″ x 12″ (opening up to twice that size) and nearly twice as thick as Mini Golf with die-cuts and fake grass on every page.  So, basically, I had invented the most expensive book in the world. But I still think it would be a lot of fun to play, if money were no object.

What Workman book would you like to receive as compensation for your involvement?

I already have so many! I’ll go with Joshua Jay’s The Complete Magician. My 6-year-old recently saw a magician at a birthday party, and now he wants to learn how it’s done. I just realized that every book I’ve mentioned in this thing has “magician” in the title. I swear that’s unintentional.

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Mike Vago spent middle school study-hall periods mapping out elaborate miniature golf courses, which not only directly led to authoring The Miniature Book of Miniature Golf and then The Pocket Book of Pocket Billiards, but also to his career as a graphic designer. He has written for New York Press, The Stranger, and Artvoice. He lives with his family in Jersey City, New Jersey. His books, mini and pocket-sized as they respectively are, make excellent stocking stuffers.

BONUS! Check out this amazing trailer:

Welcome to Part 2 of the 2010 Workman Holiday Gift Guide Extravaganzaaaa! If you missed Part 1: Kids and Kids-at-Heart, check it out here. Then see below for part 2 of the list: The Grown-Ups’ Table. What do you get for your parents, your aunts and uncles, and those other adult relatives who can be a little tricky to shop for? Here’s what Workman employees had to say…

The Grown-Ups’ Table:

• “My husband and I just had our first child, a daughter, so I will slip From Father to Daughter into his stocking.” —Selina
• “I’m giving The Crabby Cook Cookbook to my mother, who no longer has to worry about cooking for a family but will get such a kick out of remembering what it was like to put dinner on the table every night … though she will be sorry that she didn’t have those simple recipes back then when she needed them. For all the hypochondriacs in my family (and that would be everyone on one side of the family, though I can’t say which)—The Secrets of People Who Never Get Sick. I think our phone calls may get more interesting when they realize there are concrete steps they can take to reduce their susceptibility to illness.” —Suzie
• “My parents are getting copies of Younger Next Year and Younger Next Year for Women, since they’re both recently retired and I want them to stay healthy and happy.” —Randall
• “I got the Islands Page-a-Day Gallery Calendar for my mom, because she loves tropical beach scenes.” —Claudia
• “Last year I gave my father-in-law The Miniature Book of Miniature Golf, which brought Christmas morning to a complete halt for a good hour, because he and my husband just had to play through the whole book (they’re very competitive, so it got a little intense)… He brought it to work and it is a huge hit in his office too. 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die was a huge hit with MY dad, who is a serious music buff. (Brought that gift-opening session to a standstill as well, as he became totally engrossed in the book!!)” —Melody
• “My step-dad is getting the Nuns Having Fun Calendar—perfect for an ex-Catholic School Boy who loves the Three Stooges. And I’ll probably give my mom a copy of The Cake Mix Doctor Bakes Gluten-Free, in hopes that she’ll send some tasty treats this year that are suitable for my glutard self.” —Emily
• “Anything golf-related goes over well with my old man.” —Tom
• “I’m giving a copy of Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies to my Aunt Betty. She’s an amazing baker, and the best part is that she always loads me up with baked goods whenever I see her (and my co-workers benefit because I bring them to the office).” —Laura
• “I’m going to give The Love That Dog Training Program to my mom, because she’s convinced that our old dog can’t learn new tricks.” —Avery
• “I got Cooking Jewish for my sister, who is constantly trying to expand her repertoire of Jewish recipes. Also, there’s a reason that Ad Hoc at Home comes wrapped in plastic. Do not open it! Or you will do what I did, which is decide that it was such a beautiful and enticing book, with such mouthwatering recipes, that, although my sister or father or best friend would have loved it, it was time I rewarded myself with a gift.” —Kathy

Hope that was helpful! And don’t forget to come back tomorrow morning for Part 3: Might-as-Well-Be-Family Friends.

It’s August – time to head to your beach, lake, or mountain home.  You already know the essential beach reads to put in your tote bag.  But all those lists forgot to mention the books you need to help fill the rest of your time!

Be sure to give the kids – or antsy adults – a copy of Origami On the Go before you get in the car.

Make a fill you up and cool you down smoothie bar with the recipes in the breakfast chapter of You Don’t Have to be Diabetic to Love This Cookbook.

Hula Hoop on the beach Gidget style – and if you test out the moves in Hooping you will end up with a smile on your face and a rock hard core!

Even on rainy days, you can play a round of the quintessential summer game with The Miniature Book of Miniature Golf

For an unforgettable, easy dinner, grill great American burgers from The Barbecue! Bible. (read an excerpt below)

And while you watch the sunset, catch fire flies and identify other bugs with The Bug Bottle and Bug Book.

Workman designer Mike Vago spent middle school study-hall periods mapping out elaborate miniature golf courses, thus giving birth years later to The Miniature Book of Miniature Golf. Here’s a brief interview with Mr. Vago.

Q: What’s the most difficult hole in the book?
A: Hole 6 is a hedge maze, so it’s intended to be done in 7 to 10 shots. It’s not a tricky shot in the classic sense, it’s just long and there’s no way to drive straight to the hole.

Q: Say a bookseller decides to take a copy of your book off the shelf and play it instead of doing returns. What’s a notable score?
A: As a former bookseller, I can say I’d never do such a thing, mostly because it would cut into my time spent reading X-Men comics on the job. But if one were to. . . Par for the course is 29, and if you can shoot under par, you may want to consider a career on the professional book-sized mini golf circuit.

Q: Any problems with gophers eating the book?
A: Nothing a little dynamite can’t solve.

Q: I understand that Tiger Woods requested that your book be included on the PGA Tour.
A: It is! Who would believe it? And to think I totally made that up.

Consider this the DVD bonus feature you didn’t get with the book: an illustrated tour of all of the rough ideas that were refined into the finished book.

When I had the idea for a miniature golf book, the first thing I thought of was hitting the ball into the hole, and having it drop down to the next page.  That part seemed pretty easy to do – just cut a hole in the page.  More of a challenge was coming up with walls.  The miniature golf courses of my childhood tended to have walls made of spraypainted bricks – solid enough that the ball bounced off, but usually just a little askew from years of being stepped on and banged into with clubs.  As bricks aren’t a great material to make a book out of, the first thing I did was to try and find a material that would work instead.  The image at the top of the page was my very first experiment with making pages that A) had walls attached to them, and B) could still close like a book.  It’s made out of foamcore, which they also don’t make books out of, but at that point I figured I’d work out the mechanics first, then figure out the materials.

The next step was making a golf course.  I wanted the course to go over the whole page spread (ie. the left and right pages).  So my first challenge was to build up each page with walls, but for the book to still be foldable.  Here’s what I came up with, the very first prototype for the book.

The first course was far simpler and more geometric than the courses in the finished book.  Again, I was still working out the mechanics; the course designs would come later.  Notice the wall that runs vertically through the middle of the page – if the book folded in two, with a split down the middle, there’d be no room for the walls, and it wouldn’t close properly.
So it actually folds in three – there’s a 1/4″ strip in the middle of the page (including that wall), that’s part of the spine of the book.  To the left is an outside view. The course is designed in such a way that, when you fold it up, the walls don’t run into each other. They fit together like a puzzle.

However, as I did a few of these, I realized that I was really limited in how I could design the courses,if I couldn’t make walls that intersected when the book folded up. So, I came up with a way to make that work. In the overhead view of the course, you can see that two of the walls have a space in the middle with an X. When you fold the book shut, the X’s line up. One half of the X is filled in, to keep the wall solid. The other half is open, so that the opposite page’s X fits in when you close the book. Here’s a model I made to test the concept.

So, I had worked out my miniature golf book, and discovered I could design some pretty interesting courses. I even started to experiment in 3 dimensions.

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