So I was thinking about my old magazine TABARD INN tonight. I edited this thing many years ago. Three issues. But it's been on my mind for the last week or two, actually. I have a few ideas about why it was never successful. Maybe the big one was my reluctance to do POD. I printed these fuckin' things first and then tried to sell them. Whoops! I'll go into another reason in a bit. Hold that thought. I'll get to it. Probably. I'm drunk--as usual--but I think I'll remember to get to it.
Regardless, I will never edit a magazine or anthology again. I have many reasons for both. The magazine I'll explain. The anthologies? Nope. You won't get that out of me unless you take me out for drinks. Like, a lot of drinks. Enough to cripple an elephant. And, naturally, off the record.
By the way, I've become friends with a lot of comics creators I'd been a fan of previous. I've interviewed many of them. They all know I was in comic book reporting. I'm out and have been for, what, a decade? And whenever I talk to them as a regular dude, they're still kind of cagey. Sometimes I wonder if I said "off the record" they'd open up a bit more. One of them actually did. Won't say who. If you follow me, you know the name. But this person trusted me, and once sworn to silence, I will forever keep that secret.
As I am unemployed, I have lots and lots of free time. I think maybe that's why I'm writing 10K words a day. Well, more like 8K now that the therapy thing is out of the way. Still better than my self-imposed 2K a day. I think it's also why I'm reading four books at the same time. Hey, I'm down from seven on January 1.
But I thought about the ridiculously difficult time I had getting someone to print the fucking thing. Issue one was so fucking offensive that no one wanted to print it. I even got someone to do it, and the young workers were happy to get it out there. They even took my money! And then the owner read it and said to give me back my money and files. I found someone who would print it! After a fucking age! They did all three!
So since I was thinking about TABARD INN, and I had the time, I wondered if maybe the printers were still around. I drove out in that direction to drive down the road to see if they were. I won't name them, just in case they're somewhere else and might get hate mail over the offensive shit, but they were on the same road as Victory Auto Wreckers. If you ever lived in my area (Chicago, if you don't know), you know them and their ancient commercial. In my opinion, there should be a really sleazy strip club in that neighborhood. Maybe down the road a bit further, as there is a police station near there.
Side note: sleazy strip clubs are my favorite. They're the places where you might get a decent handjob if you paid enough, and you might buy narcotics off a dancer or you might even get the clap from a lapdance that got a little too close. I miss the one at the end of I-290 that eventually got shut down for shady reasons.
In fact, now that I think about it, if you drove past my printers, turned right, went down a while, then turned left on Grand, there used to be a strip club there. I remember my writing partner when I was a journalist and I tried to get into the club to interview strippers to find out what they did for Easter. Bet you were thinking Valentine's Day, huh? Wrong, silly goose. We were, uh, refused service. I also drove a friend who also was an ex there once so she could fill out an application. It was called All Stars. It's a trucking company now, but for some perverse reason they left the sign up. I wonder how many dudes go in there to get lapdances only to be sold on truck storage.
So I drove by, looking for the printer, and sadly they're gone. Too bad. They helped me when no one else would. Some metal works company is there now. Ah well.
I stand by everything I published in that magazine, even the Anthony Haversham stories about Bobby Yandell, Private Investigator. Yeah, I wrote those. And that one by Jack Graves, the one about the guy who wants to fuck his dead mom and she turns out to be alive still. I wrote that one, too. I think it's in Tales of Questionable Taste, but I'm too lazy to look it up now.
What I don't stand by is how I acted as the host, the Crypt-Keeper of TABARD INN, if you will. It wasn't me. Well, it was more or less me . . . if I was an edgy and possibly alcoholic rock DJ. Not those shock jocks in the morning. Those are actually called "radio personalities." Isn't it weird that we had that shock jock period? I enjoyed it at the time, but looking back? *collar pull* But some part of my mind thought it would be a great idea to come off as a rock station DJ. This is why I don't trust my instincts. They are always wrong. I look back on that with a great deal of regret. It came off as kind of disgusting, especially the bumper sticker contests. I'm sorry about that. That was my mistake, and I own it 100%. This, by the way, is the other reason I thought the magazine failed. See? I'm not that drunk, am I? Well, maybe.
Another side note: offensive stories. I'm not talking about offensive-offensive. I'm talking about creatively offensive. Any asshole and fuckface and prickcunt can come along and sling the n-word around like they had practice. Same with the other f-word. And so on and so forth. That shit is just offensive-offensive. I have put awful words in awful characters' mouths, but it's to prove something about their moral shortcomings. To use it just to use it is just showing you're a piece of shit.
I'm talking about writing transgressive shit that pushes the envelope but does so creatively. Like, say, a dude you thought was making a video to show he can suck his own dick but it's really because he wants to video him biting it off. Who wrote that one? Oh . . . maybe it's in a book named after the title of a certain blog. Thanks to M for publishing it first!
Here are a few other reasons I regret the magazine.
I got a lot of letters from mental patients. Nothing wrong with that. I'd be a hypocrite if I talked shit about that, especially after the psych ward. But some would go a bit too far off the beam. Like the guy who decided I was his agent, and he said I should pay Google a bunch of money to make sure that anytime someone looked up science fiction, his name would be the first to come up. I had to explain to him that I was not the guy he thought I was. I lived more or less in my grandmother's basement at the time. When I sent that to him, I never heard from him again. So yeah. If you get a stalker, and he was borderline stalker, tell them something pathetic about you. They'll go away.
Which reminds me, I regretted not getting that PO Box. I stupidly used my own address, which everyone tried to talk me out of. I figured I could handle anyone who came after me, but then I remembered that I have relatives. Awkward at least. Possibly borderline criminal at most. I thought I was saving money. Again, whoops!
I regretted the sense that because I was a publisher, I could do things for people. That was absolutely not true. I couldn't. But people thought I could. One guy asked me for Stephen King's number. Granted, now that I'm a lot older and I have more experience, I have discovered that if you're in my business, we all know each other. Or if we don't, we at least know of each other.
Full disclosure: I met Stephen King once. He was on his Bag of Bones tour at the Harold Washington Library in Chicago on Congress Pkwy and State St. Previously I'd sent him some artwork my friend did. His name is Rob Tannahill, and for mostly my amusement he would do King parodies and replace the characters with Beavis and Butt-Head. Like, this was comic book level stuff. For example, here are a couple of titles. THE DORK HALF. THE STUPID DEATH OF BEAVIS VERRILL. THE SCAMMED. So three titles, then. I even got to be in his parody of The Shawshank Redemption. So with Rob's permission I copied them and sent them to King. When I got through the line and shook King's hand, I told him that I was the one who sent the Beavis and Butt-Head parodies that my friend had made. And let me tell you, you have NEVER lived your life until you've heard King do his Beavis impression. (I seem to be thinking about impressions lately, too, I guess.) He got this demented look on his face and said, with his Maine twang, "FIRE! FIRE!"
Does he know who I am? Probably not. I was a guest twice on The Horror Show, which I've heard he listens to, so maybe? I've been mentioned a few times without me being on, so maybe? Chet Williamson, whom I worship, once did a live read for Dong of Frankenstein, which might stand out to King, so maybe? But I'm certain he doesn't remember the exchange. When you're Stephen King, you meet a lot of people. A LOT.
So no. I don't have his phone number.
I also got a lot of submissions from prisoners. I got to publish one of them, even. I couldn't pay him because the prison system forbade it. I loved those letters because I believe that any prisoner who submits a story to a publication is trying to redeem themselves. A lot of them were even good stories, just not right for what I had in mind. But then there was this one letter I got from a prisoner who wanted to pay me to write stories for him. It would have been a huge payday, actually, if I had done it. I have still never made as much money for one story that he would have paid me for one story. But I said no. Sometimes you can't take the money and keep your integrity. That's the shit you've got to turn down. I needed the money at the time. Desperately. I'm not lying to you when I say that I would be a lot better off financially speaking if I'd taken the money. I said no. What he wanted was time travel porn. He wanted mind control porn. He wanted racially charged porn that was essentially rape porn. In addition to that, he requested just plain old rape porn.
I look up all the prisoners who sent me stuff. Sometimes the crime is understandable. Sometimes it's really bad, but the person genuinely regrets it and wants to redeem themselves and maybe contribute to society. But this guy? He's going to be in prison long after I die. Long after he dies. I shit you not, he might get out a hundred and twenty years from now. Since he's not a Highlander, I'm guessing he won't see the streets again any time in his life. He's got a lot of rape charges. Manslaughter charges. FUCKING KIDNAPPING CHARGES. If I remember right, he even robbed a bank. Some of those rapes were not committed against adults.
So no. I'm going to turn down that money. I'd like to be rich someday, but there are routes I am not willing to go down. Hell, I might not even be able.
Sometimes, you morally have to turn down the money. You HAVE TO.
Yet another side note: I actually know someone who did time for a bank robbery. He got kicked out of the Navy for doing it. Again, no names. He's suffered enough.
So yeah. You'll never see issue four, as I predicted in issue three. You'll never see another anthology I've edited. For vastly different reasons, I've turned down four editing jobs for other authors in the last three months. Paying jobs. In one case, a very good paying job. I mostly did it to focus on my own shit, especially since I was going to start that new job soon. But the job keeps getting delayed. It's something I'm reconsidering. It's going into that lizard brain conversation I'm going to have soon, maybe tomorrow or the next day.
So yeah. I guess if you want copies, I have boxes of them still cluttering up my living room. I've taken to giving them away as a three-issue package for anyone who buys my books at conventions. Since conventions are canceled until the plague finally dies, what the hell? You don't even have to buy anything from me. If you want a single issue, Paypal me a dollar for shipping. If you want all three, make it five for shipping. If I actually published you in any one of them, and you want me to send you copies, you won't even have to pay for shipping. Unless you're ordering like ten or twenty or something. We'll talk. The issues will be free, but the shipping might get crazy. Contact me in the comments or social media or wherever you know me from. Hell, if I can hand deliver them, I'll do it for free.
Just know that I kind of come off like a dick as the host. Sorry.
