Finally Whirligigzine News...

There will be poetry. In fact a lot of it, as the spring issue will be exclusively poetry and related.

You may want to check out my essay -- or rant if you prefer -- at Outsider Writers. It started some heated discussion about what makes poetry and poets themselves in today's world.

Outsider Poetics -- New Skins For Old

The Guild of Outsider Writers - What's Your Story?

Write and get paid...the Writer's Guild Of America Strike...
Insiders and outsiders...etc.

Something new from me.

I have launched Whirligigzine. I'd like to thank you all for hanging in with me and sharing my updates over the months as I've all-too-slowly gotten it together. Members of OW and others were unfailingly supportive and were there to help me over a few rough spots. But I'm happy to be part of the growing online lit world. Writers who don't realize the necessity of migrating to the Internet are going to be hurt in the long run.

I don't take the Internet's influence on reading and writing for granted and I see certain changes continue to be made to the dissemination of lit. A couple years ago putting one's own writing online was anathema, at least according to some like Hollywood writer Lee Goldberg. Today a blog like Diary Of A Heretic, that is comprised of nothing but fictional content from the author is nominated for a best literature blog award at the 2007 Weblogs Awards.

As 2007 was the anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac's On The Road, the question of what makes an outsider writer was forced onto countless blogs. And it gave us all a good view of an earlier version of what it meant to be outside the mainstream and then accepted by it, creating the greatly mixed results that the so-called King Of The Beat Writers met and which contributed mightily to his demise.

I followed with great interest a dustup involving the traditional and best known of lit's outsiders, science fiction writers. When the group the Science Fiction Writers Of America noticed that some of its writers' work was being put online without the author's permission they jumped the gun and rode into Dodge with cybersixguns blazing, angering other members of the organization to the extent that they retaliated with International Pixel Stained Technopeasant Day, where many members, including Campbell Award winning writer John Scalzi, posted their work online for free in protest. It is a long -- one might say labyrinthine -- news story that may not be clear in my brief summary. But it is quite interesting, especially in light of the current writer's strike centering on -- among other considerations -- compensation for online work. You may want to follow it through Google, or the search engine of your choice. The Scalzi Technopeasant link here is also a good place to start.

A number of litbloggers have proven themselves in other arenas, including, perhaps most notably, book reviewing. Ed Champion (edrants.com) and the writer who some consider the gold standard for litblogging, Maud Newton (maudnewton.com) have made appearances in the LA Times and the New York Times, respectively. And so the interplay between online and real world lit continues, as does the morphing from outsider blogger to insider mainstream journalist.

Whirligigzine will have a print version out soon, but it is really the online version that means the most to me. That is, the print version will be a reflection of the ezine and not visa versa. At the same time, the ezine will augment the print version, which will direct readers to the online site, where art and illustration that may be too complicated/expensive to print will be available for viewing at the cost of a few pennies of bandwidth.

I foresee a smooth melding of the two media and I'm as exited as I imagine early publishers and editors utilizing Gutenberg's new invention must have been many centuries ago. I'm feeling a bit like an amalgam of Max Perkins and Max Headroom, ready to have fun as one of the new hybrid editor-publishers, while leaving the shrieks of the Cassandras warning of the death of print echoing behind me. The brave new world of cyberlit, with all its possibilities, stretches out infinitely before us all.

Carpe diem!

Are we toying with fate? Not really, just trying to get it all right before it's given to you, The Whirligigzine's readers. To the left is a view of an early version of the print cover that will be seen in bookshops and in online stores soon.

And so the mistake doesn't come back to plague her in some form or another, our poet Ms. Drehmer's name is spelled "Aleathia", not the way it appears on the illustrated test cover.

Do I worry that The Whirligigzine might not find an audience? Not really, even though it may not be underground enough for the hardcore undergrounders or "literary" enough for the university/quarterly crowd. So who does that leave? Everyone else -- the majority who enjoy good stories well-told and poetry with heart and soul. (But I do know that it has at least one story that is bizarre enough for the Bizarro readers and anyway, one would never mistake The Whirligigzine as a mainstream publication.)

This is not the Whirligig of an earlier day. Means of publishing have changed and there is no good reason to stick to the raw kitchen table look of that day. The original Whirligig served its time well and its style set it apart from the crowd. But there are now accessible and inexpensive ways to produce a fairly slick product that still is full of authentic voices and future looking writing, based in the traditional, yet of a newness that makes readers sit up and take notice.

Zines are now very different things from what they were -- even traditionalists from the golden days of the nineties are producing zines with slick covers and (gasp!) ISBNs -- and those who will criticize The Whirligigzine for its form are missing the point.

And as for the slight change in name, from The Whirligig to The Whirligigzine: let it remind those who may have forgotten, and inform those who never knew, where this litmag came from. And how it carries on in the tradition of the zine world: with unbroken DIY spirit and without fear or concern about the "big boys" of publishing.

Check Our Pulse

Linkage at The Whirligigzine

Fiction writers who appear in The Whirligigzine are now linked from the site, which is about to go live with fiction and poetry and surprises. See what these great writers are doing besides The Whirligigzine. What do Nick Mamatas, Karl Koweski, Kevin Dole 2, and Jeff Somers have to offer besides what you'll see in The Whirligigzine Issue 1.2? Please go and find out.

Inside The New Whirligigzine

Into SF, Fantasy, writing that is bizarre, as well as that existing outside of the usual categories? Then you'll want to read the forthcoming issue of The Whirligigzine.

Meanwhile, Whirligigzine.com is going live in a matter of days, followed by the print version in early November, around the time of the World Fantasy Convention, Nov 1-4 in Saratoga NY.

Included in The Whirligigzine will be Bram Stoker nominee Nick (Move Under Ground; Under My Roof) Mamatas with another of his well-wrought entertaining/disturbing stories. Longtime zinester Jeff Somers, who has a new novel called The Electric Church (Orbit) out now, will be represented with a hard-edged story that almost needs a new genre to describe it -- how about avant-noir? Jeff will be at WFC, as will I, to catch any stray rays of his reflected glory, which I'll use to illuminate the wonders of The Whirligigzine, Issue 1a. Or something like that. (Jeff's site, http://the-electric-church.com/ is worth a visit.)

And if you like hard-hitting stories, where horror is an everyday occurrence and the writing keeps you off balance from first sentence to last, Karl Koweski and Kevin Dole2 will set you up with a couple that make Palahniuk look like a sissy. And top it all off with an excerpt from August H. Bjorn's novel The Prodigal sending you on an all-expenses-unpaid trip to one of the circles of an outrageous and hilarious Dantesque hell in the modern world.

And then the poets...

But I'll tell you about them in another update. They deserve one of their own.

And then I'll tell you about a couple editorial surprises.

If you need a zine that is SFnal and fantastical/bizarre, while literary enough to shut up the inevitable naysayers, write to me at jdfinch@whirligigzine.com. Or go to http://www.whirligigzine.com in a couple weeks to order. Prepublication updates will continue to be found here on The Whirliblog.

Daily Kos

The Whirligig gets a mention.