Sunday, March 06, 2011

My Autoblography* at We Make Zines**

Bounced around (and in and out of) a few writer's groups and realized, to paraphrase George Thorogood's "I Drink Alone" that when I write alone I prefer to be by myself.

My first publication was in 2nd grade with a Jungle Book type story: "How The Giraffes Got their Necks". Many years later I moved to Brattleboro Vermont, where Kipling wrote and published "The Jungle Book," which he had conceived years earlier in India. In between those two events I worked for northern New Jersey newspapers as a columnist/reporter/photographer; wrote articles on film for Cinefantastique, Fangoria, and Filmfax; wrote on collectibles for many publications; had humorous fiction on eyeshot.net, somewhat.org, nealpollack.com, and mcsweeneys.net. A couple pieces of fiction ("Full Circle" about a homeless woman carrying around a fortune in rare stamps at the bottom of her shopping bag and "Flight of Fire" about who blew up the Zeppelin Hindenburg (that's the "Oh the humanity!" one)) published in nationally circulated mags.

Started zining around the time McSweeney's started. Reacted by doing Philly based zine parody McStoney's. Next up was a couple of issues of Whirligigzine, after I bought the name Whirligig, etc. from editor and former owner Frank Marcopolos. Currently I'm throwing together a new issue of Whirligigzine. Leave me a note if you want to be alerted when it's ready. It will have everything from Coney Islands for the mind ("What the hell is that," you ask) to Kerouac to satirical-parody fake memoir to stuff-shirted litcrit to popping the pomo fandom bubble to why science fiction won't last to laughing at things worth laughing at to well, whatever else is laying around that won't fit anywhere else. (I'm thinking of starting it with an anti-manifesto manifesto, which maybe I'll also post here.)

If you're curious about how to categorize me, I fit in "lit" and "humor" and "weird" with the slightest bit of "steampunk." There, I'm pigeonholed -- now please don't ruffle my feathers. (Oh, and I'm really freakin' old. Yeah, the horror. The horror.)

After everything else I continue to do the zine thing. Obviously.

* Cute, right?
** Sign up required.

2 comments:

Wred Fright said...

Please let me know when the new issue's out. And, if you still need stuff to fill it up with, then please let me know that as well. Thanks!

J.D. Finch said...

Thanks Wred, you're definitely in the loop. And yeah, I may need stuff -- I'll be in touch. Anyway, when my new baby's born you'll be one of the first to hear it cry.