Hard To Find Since The Internet

Question was brought up where to find the few of my things ever to have seen the dark of print and you have to remember that it all basically happened just as the last gasp of the alternative print scene was gagging on a cocaine spoon and the internet was about to wipe us all out. But if you think about it it was a logical progression. The kind of people hanging around the last great altzine explosion in the late 80's/early 90's would, some anyway, eventually move to anime, 4chan (no link and NSFW), Encyclopedia Dramatica (no link and NSFW) also zombies. Though I of course was a good boy and just stayed home mostly. Also my support was wrenched out from under me and the *established* fiction world was never in my universe. This however has changed as I approach croaking, and I have stopped 'experimenting" and just write now. Ya think.

There is not a remaining record of a lot of it, and what exists still is back issues, though some are actually listed as out of print.

The LA Times called Version90 "fiction, poetry, and reviews of a resolutely postmodern variety. All this and more is intensely illustrated with eye-catching photographs and unusual (but not obtrusive) graphics. Version 90 is intent on filling a gap that many of us didn't know existed." And I was lucky enough to be included in the first two issues. It was published in Massachusetts when it was going. The last known place you may be able to find any is this bookstore. Maybe. If they still have any.

Slipstream is a better known and - I believe - still functioning poetry magazine out of (upstate?) New York. Issue #11 is where I got to be one of the *others* included behind Bukowski. But I know that #11 is no longer in print. Says so right here.

A lot of stuff is in back issues of John M. Bennett's Lost and Found Times. he still sells lots of back issues & even complete sets. Just a warning, it was my surrealist phase so it's not what you're seeing now.

Mallife (a cover of which is pictured above) put me in #s 17 and 19. The blurb for that troop explained Mallife by saying "its pages (and magnetic tape) have showcased some the strangest and most original voices in the marginal and underground mail network, jammed together in a not-so-easy to read, mix and match casserole." It was also published by Mike Miskowski's BombShelterProps, which was responsible for my only ISBN# for a little novella titled The Move, but you will note it is out of print 'cuz it isn't listed here where you can still get other remnants.

And I'm not linking to the recently self-published novel at LuLu because it is vastly different now than what it looked like then, is better edited and... is edited in the first place. I don't like that version much anymore. In fact i kind of hate it. The new version is and will be better.

But that leads me to the other thing. I'm not sure I like ANY of my old stuff any more. I've gotten more into more traditional prose with fewer influences by the dadaists, farther removed from the punk scene, plus I'm old now etc. In other words the new stuff is actually now READABLE and more UNDERSTANDABLE. So I'm not touting these old relics and won't get a cent if you seek them out & don't care.

The key difference between good fiction writing and bad fiction writing is simple. Just tell a damn story. Something I should have told myself years ago probably.

I'm not sure I really like anything listed here.

ON EDIT: There were other altzines that took work. Asylum, Paper Radio, Sub Rosa, and a few others but good luck finding even a mention of them anywhere. Internet killed the radio star...

ON FURTHER EDIT - Sorry to keep popping up in your feeder but I forgot a link that will give you a wider background of that era/movement/whatever. Factsheet5 was the walking original where I think now the only source is Utne Reader (no link, no likee). So I guess the internet wasn't a completely bad thing.