A Bounty of Nunchucks

Here are the nunchucks that play such an important role in Chapter Four of The Book that Proves Time Travel Happens.

The artwork is by Terry Fan and his brother Eric; and I'm delighted to say they've done similar illustrations for each of the book's twenty-seven chapters. (That is, twenty-seven illustrations of different things; not twenty-seven illustrations of nunchucks. The book is weird, but not that weird.)

If you study the picture closely, you'll realize these nunchucks are made from two of the cardboard tubes found in the centers of paper towel rolls. Compare the illustration to this photograph of actual paper-towel-roll nunchucks:

Paper-towel-roll nunchucks. From the author's collection.

The observant reader of this blog, if there is such a thing, will notice that each of the tubes in the illustration has six bands of dried glue circling it while those in the photo have five. Terry and Eric's nunchucks are made out of tubes from industrial-strength artist-grade paper towels. Artist-grade paper towels are twenty-eight percent more absorbent than the towels the rest of us use, because artists spill more things than the rest of us and the things they spill are twenty-eight percent wetter. (India ink, for example  has a Specific Wetness of 8.4, more than twice the Specific Wetness of orange juice.)

This is the first of five sneak peeks at Time Travel's interior art. I intend highlighting one illustration per month until the book's April publication, or until I get a cease-and-desist order from my publisher or from one or more of the Fan brothers.

Next Month: Nellie's Erratic