Zines and.
I should probably clean up after the Symposium! —Here’s what it looked like when I was setting up. (See? I told you to look for the roses.)
Then they opened the doors to the general zine-reading public. It got crowded fast.
Since I didn’t so much have a table-buddy this year, I didn’t get out on the floor much at all, so I didn’t end up with much except what I traded for from behind the table. —I did nip up at one point to grab a copy of Curse + Berate in 69+ Languages, but I’d promised I’d do so last year, and anyway, curses! And invective. How could one resist?
Also: a how-to zine on resisting armed forces recruiters; Megan’s Whatever Saves Vol. 4: Places; Adriana’s lovely Poe-ä ; No Conversation no. 1; a couple of short stories printed on bookmarks; an untitled, uncredited, crudely cut story about Cowboy Country; and did you know Indy was posting his Ellie Connelly strips to the web? Then why didn’t you tell me?
Only tangentially related, if at all: a terribly complimentary review of the current enterprise has been posted to the Web Fiction Guide. I did not know there was a Web Fiction Guide. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be off to check out the neighbors.
—posted 5927 days ago
And then what happened.
Just a reminder: no. 6 begins its run here, tomorrow; Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for the next two weeks.
Of course, if you must know what happens next right away, you could always order a paper copy. Snail-mail’s reasonably quick, these days.
—posted 5934 days ago
Sunday morning.
Met a woman yesterday who’d bought a copy of no. 5 in Chicago. “Quimby’s!” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “I saw it there on the shelf and said, hey, I know that place. So I bought it. It gave me,” and she sighed, “this feeling, that I. I can’t quite. It was – it was a very plane feeling, you know? A plain feeling. I’m not being very articulate.”
Which made me ridiculously pleased. Even if it wasn’t until this morning that realized I didn’t know if she’d said plane or plain. (Or something else entirely. It got noisy yesterday.)
One of the volunteers from Reading Frenzy (whose name I shamefully do not know) was thrilled to see no. 6 is out. “This is great! There’s this group of people who are obsessed with this zine.”
“Um,” I said, and I blinked, and I stupidly didn’t ask who or how or why. (If you’re reading this: thanks? Drop a line? I’ll work faster?) “I’m making the rounds next week,” I said. Reading Frenzy, Guapo, the library, the IPRC, Quimby’s, I really should get out to Q is for Choir –
And then she asked if it was ever going to get put into a book or something. “Maybe,” I said. “I dunno. I kinda like the whole episodic thing.”
Which – and yes, I’m slow; yes, I miss the obvious; I like to think my obliviousness is offset by the singular attention I can bring to strange distractions nobody else bothers to notice – ooh, shiny! – but saying “I kinda like the whole episodic thing” lit up a lightbulb over my head.
When I crack jokes about how this would be better as a comic if I could draw, or how it’s the TV show I’d make had I the money and the patience and force of will necessary to weld a crew entire to my bidding, it’s not because I dislike prose (heaven forfend) or because it requires the eyekick goshwow that prose can only echo dimly.
It’s because the thing I want to do, the episodic long-form storytelling, the discrete epic, has a long-established model in comics and TV to work within and market from, and it doesn’t so much in prose. MacAllister Stone took a chance, for which I tip my hat, but my formal peers are epic internet fanfiction serials – and while I’d never complain about the company I’m kept with, still: it’s not the sort of thing you expect to see when you go to a zine symposium, or click a Project Wonderful ad over at Gunnerkrigg Court.
“It’s a serialized adventure zine,” I’m telling browsers over and over again. “Every issue’s a chapter in the longer story, like a comic book, or an episode of a TV show.” And oh! they say, and I get it, but still: comic book. TV show. (Short story? Novella? Novel?)
So: the Why and the Wherefore, or at least what I’m telling myself they are this Sunday morning. (Of course, the other idea is that I’d be writing them faster much faster. Gin! Gin and soaking! Go!)
—posted 5941 days ago
If I weld the Rivet faster –
Ladies and gentlemen, we are now taking orders for no. 6, “Anvil.”
The chapbook will premiere this weekend at the Portland Zine Symposium; if you’re able to pick up a copy in person, by all means, do so. I’d love to say hi.
Copies ordered hereabouts will begin to ship next week.
It will be serialized here on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays beginning Sept. 1st.
(Now: churches & bicycles & gin – )
—posted 5944 days ago
Things to keep in mind:
The secret of running gags.
One is climbing a dark flight of steps with no notion of where one is going and no idea of where one has been. Taking the first step, one smells the odor of jasmine. This catches one’s attention; jasmine, or rather the scent of jasmine, forms for a moment one’s entire universe.
On the second step, one smells nothing, and yet the scent of jasmine lingers. From this, we derive memory: the memory of the sensation lasts beyond its stimulus.
On the third step, one smells the odor of roses. From this, we derive difference, comparison, contemplation.
On the fourth step, the odor of jasmine. From this, we derive recollection and recognition.
On the fifth step, the odor of carnation. From this, we derive reflection. How is this act of comparison different from the previous?
On the sixth step, the odor of excrement. From this, we derive judgment. One is clearly worse than the others.
On the seventh step, the odor of jasmine. From this, we derive understanding. How is one different from the moment one first experienced this sensation?
—the Yellow Book of Lem
—posted 5944 days ago
In which my need to work on the whole marketing thing is discussed.
The thing of it is, if I say anything and then for one reason or another (I’m on my, what, fourth 70+ hour work-week in a row? fifth? I’ve lost count) I can’t follow through, then, well, I’ll feel like a heel and you’ll be disappointed and I’ll feel even more like a heel. But if I do follow through and I haven’t said anything and you hear about it a week or two later, you’ll be kicking yourself or me if you can reach.
Deep breath.
I’m (holds up thumb and forefinger pinched together but not quite touching) this close to finishing no. 6.
The hope is this: it’ll debut on paper this coming weekend, at the Portland Zine Symposium, where I’m tabling for the third year in a row. Thereafter it’ll be available for purchase from the next window down, and also at some if not all of the fine establishments listed therein. Come September 1st, it’ll run here in the usual Monday-Wednesday-Friday bi-weekly schedule, ending on September 12th. (“Usual,” he says.)
And then I’ll start making excuses for no. 7, “Gin-soaked.”
So! Come to the Zine Symposium! —If I do manage somehow not to follow through, it’ll be that much easier for you to kick me directly. Wait: you were going to kick me if I did follow through but didn’t say anything and you missed out. But I said something, so kicking’s right out. Maybe we’ll just say hi. I’ll have little photo prints of the cover images. I might could also make some stickers. Would you like some stickers?
Also, while I’m at it: Facebook. Facebook is not a marketing plan, I realize. But it’s something.
—posted 5949 days ago
Wordle!
So I did it to the “Prolegomenon.” [via]
—posted 6007 days ago
The contractual obligation post.
Dylan Meconis, you see, is a member of the Yankee cartooning supergroup Periscope, and aside from being a good friend of the Spouse (and, yes, myself) she’s also our tenant, which is among other reasons why despite the fact that this is by no means a comic book, I’ll be sitting behind a table at Emerald City this weekend. Would you like a teaser of the (mumblety-mumble) sixth issue? Find the Periscope Studios tables, and look for the one with the roses and such.
—Fun fact: one of the working titles was Emerald City, before the Spouse reminded me of certain facts. (It’s unfair, I know. Portland has far more greenspace. Hell, Phoenix has more urban greenspace than Seattle…)
—posted 6050 days ago
Things to keep in mind:
The secret of clichés.
Made haphazardly, it probably made itself, if not actually against the will of its authors and actors, then at least beyond their control. And this is the reason it works, in spite of æsthetic theories and theories of filmmaking. For in it there unfolds with almost telluric force the power of Narrative in its natural state, without Art intervening to discipline it. And so we can accept it when characters change mood, morality, and psychology from one moment to the next, when conspirators cough to interrupt the conversation if a spy is approaching, when whores weep at the sound of “La Marseillaise.” When all the archetypes burst in shamelessly, we reach Homeric depths. Two clichés make us laugh. A hundred clichés move us. For we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, and celebrating a reunion. Just as the height of pain may encounter sensual pleasure, and the height of perversion border on mystical energy, so too the height of banality allows us to catch a glimpse of the sublime. Something has spoken in place of the director. If nothing else, it is a phenomenon worthy of awe.
—posted 6107 days ago
Things to keep in mind:
The secret of evidence.
As the subject exited the bus, he did not comply with at least 3 loud demands for him to put his hands in the air. He kept his hands in his chest area and looked disoriented and stared off into space. Officer Park tazed the subject who was then handcuffed after the sword was removed from his person…prior to transport, [he] said bizarre things like he was just pickling mushrooms and I was just hit by a meteorite. [He] knew he was in Portland but couldn’t tell us where… The sword was taken as evidence.
—posted 6112 days ago
