Category: Announcements

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Zine Reviews Announcement

The world will forgive you for taking care of yourself. Or the world that matters.

A friend wrote that to me recently. They were helping me to relax about feeling bad. Why was I feeling bad? I was planning on completing a zine project and releasing it on the 17th. It didn’t matter that Wanderer had an MRI scheduled that day (he’s okay) and that I had to travel to Melbourne to see a neurologist the next day (I’m not awesome, but I can get better).

I hold myself to task for these things and get very disappointed when I don’t live up to my expectations.

The thing is that I am stressed. I am a little overwhelmed right now, and even though I certainly have the time to sit down with a zine and review it, I’m concerned that my exhaustion, my mood, and my stress may make that review less than that zine – or any zine – deserves from me. I respect that people are paying their hard-earned money to send me their zines, and I never want to give anything other than the best.

So I need to take this week off reviews. Just today and tomorrow. I’ll still be posting International Zine Month stuff. I’ll still have calls for submissions going up this weekend. But I can’t give zines the attention they deserve for a proper review this week. I will be right back to it next week with bells on.

I’m probably making a bigger deal out of this than it needs to be. I mean, what’s two days? Two reviews that will happen later instead of today and tomorrow? It almost feels egotistical to assume people would care to the extent that I need to put up this announcement.

I hope that my stress about it just goes to show how much I care about this blog, about zines, and about every one of you who reads this blog. That I respect and love what I do. Feel fortunate that I can do this and bring people some happiness on occasion.

So I do hope you’ll forgive me. It’s hard to lose my ‘winning’ streak of not missing a review day this year. But I won’t sacrifice quality for quantity. (Or self-competition.) Not in this.

Big hugs and loves of love from Oz,

Nyx

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Happy International Zine Month! – Announcements

Hello zine friends! I know it’s not quite July 1st everywhere in the world just yet, but I am so excited and don’t want to hold off jumping into International Zine Month!

If you’re new to the whole shebang, July is International Zine Month where zine enthusiasts around the world get their zine groove on in a multitude of ways. One of those is by doing the activity-a-day
prompts by Alex Wrekk:

I don’t imagine I will be surprising anyone when I say that I am aiming to do each prompt of the day. I won’t be postponing or changing the usual schedule, so be prepared for quite a few posts coming your way this month (especially if you’re signed up to receive post notifications by email).

The activities in the list are a smidge dates, so I’ll provide an alternative activity for the day here and there, but I’m not going to swoop in and make a whole new IZM list.

I am absolutely thrilled to announce that, along with IZM, we can now celebrate the brand new shiny home of We Make Zines: WeMakeZines.com!

Go there, sign up, and get chatting! I’m there as Nyx or @theauthor if you’d like to be friends.

That’s it for now. I’ll be back soon with the post for day one: Make a Top 10 list of reasons why you love zines!

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Quick Updates

I have two new zines up for sale in my Etsy shop!

‘Don’t Call Me Cupcake: 2017’ is the seventh of a perzine series about my life. In this zine, I write about deciding not to write zines on a schedule, how my cat has used up most of his nine lives over the past few months, dealing with anxiety and mania at the same time, share the first chapter of my fourth novel, and more.

(PDF version coming soon)

The F Word is a zine about my favourite expletive and is an expanded version of an essay I wrote for one of my professional editing courses. (Top marks, if you are curious.) While it does poke fun at swearing, it also examines the history, versatility, and other factors that makes f*** a swear word for the ages.

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Calling Zine Makers, Libraries, Distros, And the Like

I’m at the very beginning stages of working on a new zine project. As part of this, I would like to include A5/A6 spaces (maybe even A7, if that works for you) that feature things like:

*Zines that have a rolling call for submissions (even if your zine changes theme/topic from issue to issue, an overarching ‘flier’ for the whole series would be awesome)
*Zine distros – whether you want to say ‘check out my distro’, are looking for zines to sell in your distro, or both!
*Zine libraries – again, whether it’s a ‘check us out’, ‘looking for zine donations’, or both, I’d love to see it
*Zine people who want to be included in an ‘open to trades’ section. I’m thinking name, preferred contact (or your mailing addy, if that’s the way you roll), and a few likes/dislikes.

The key thing here is that things be ‘undated’ (hence sharing a zine series rather than one specific call for submissions) so things aren’t out of date before I get the chance to create the thing.

Ideally, I’d like things to be images with text on them because of the limited space involved (with the exception of the trades section, which will be text only). But I want to be flexible, too. This project is really in its early days, so I’m still figuring a lot out.

If you want to get involved straight away (please do!) then you can shoot me an email (theauthor at inkyblots.com)

Posted on

Calling Zine Makers, Libraries, Distros, And the Like

I’m at the very beginning stages of working on a new zine project. As part of this, I would like to include A5/A6 spaces (maybe even A7, if that works for you) that feature things like:

*Zines that have a rolling call for submissions (even if your zine changes theme/topic from issue to issue, an overarching ‘flier’ for the whole series would be awesome)
*Zine distros – whether you want to say ‘check out my distro’, are looking for zines to sell in your distro, or both!
*Zine libraries – again, whether it’s a ‘check us out’, ‘looking for zine donations’, or both, I’d love to see it
*Zine people who want to be included in an ‘open to trades’ section. I’m thinking name, preferred contact (or your mailing addy, if that’s the way you roll), and a few likes/dislikes.

The key thing here is that things be ‘undated’ (hence sharing a zine series rather than one specific call for submissions) so things aren’t out of date before I get the chance to create the thing.

Ideally, I’d like things to be images with text on them because of the limited space involved (with the exception of the trades section, which will be text only). But I want to be flexible, too. This project is really in its early days, so I’m still figuring a lot out.

If you want to get involved straight away (please do!) then you can shoot me an email (theauthor at inkyblots.com)

Posted on

Calling Zine Makers, Libraries, Distros, And the Like

I’m at the very beginning stages of working on a new zine project. As part of this, I would like to include A5/A6 spaces (maybe even A7, if that works for you) that feature things like:

*Zines that have a rolling call for submissions (even if your zine changes theme/topic from issue to issue, an overarching ‘flier’ for the whole series would be awesome)
*Zine distros – whether you want to say ‘check out my distro’, are looking for zines to sell in your distro, or both!
*Zine libraries – again, whether it’s a ‘check us out’, ‘looking for zine donations’, or both, I’d love to see it
*Zine people who want to be included in an ‘open to trades’ section. I’m thinking name, preferred contact (or your mailing addy, if that’s the way you roll), and a few likes/dislikes.

The key thing here is that things be ‘undated’ (hence sharing a zine series rather than one specific call for submissions) so things aren’t out of date before I get the chance to create the thing.

Ideally, I’d like things to be images with text on them because of the limited space involved (with the exception of the trades section, which will be text only). But I want to be flexible, too. This project is really in its early days, so I’m still figuring a lot out.

If you want to get involved straight away (please do!) then you can shoot me an email (theauthor at inkyblots.com)

Posted on

Calling Zine Makers, Libraries, Distros, And the Like

I’m at the very beginning stages of working on a new zine project. As part of this, I would like to include A5/A6 spaces (maybe even A7, if that works for you) that feature things like:

*Zines that have a rolling call for submissions (even if your zine changes theme/topic from issue to issue, an overarching ‘flier’ for the whole series would be awesome)
*Zine distros – whether you want to say ‘check out my distro’, are looking for zines to sell in your distro, or both!
*Zine libraries – again, whether it’s a ‘check us out’, ‘looking for zine donations’, or both, I’d love to see it
*Zine people who want to be included in an ‘open to trades’ section. I’m thinking name, preferred contact (or your mailing addy, if that’s the way you roll), and a few likes/dislikes.

The key thing here is that things be ‘undated’ (hence sharing a zine series rather than one specific call for submissions) so things aren’t out of date before I get the chance to create the thing.

Ideally, I’d like things to be images with text on them because of the limited space involved (with the exception of the trades section, which will be text only). But I want to be flexible, too. This project is really in its early days, so I’m still figuring a lot out.

If you want to get involved straight away (please do!) then you can shoot me an email (theauthor at inkyblots.com)

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Changing the Way I Look at Things

I didn’t intend to take off yesterday, but here we are, and there it is.

I’ll get to the TL;DR part first so anyone who wants to skip out the rest can. I have to adjust how I do things. I took of yesterday, and I’ll be taking off tomorrow to get myself on more solid ground. I’ll be back on Thursday and Friday with reviews… probably. I will definitely be back this weekend with calls for submissions, and next week will resume the normal way of things.

No biggie, yes?

I apologise if it seems like I’m getting into theatrics with this, but I honestly want to share this but don’t know how to go about it. I’m not looking for pity, and it only has a relation to zines rather than being about zines. In the end, though, I want this to be a conversation rather than a random spit out of information and reviews (as fun and lovely as that is). I want to tell you about the not-necessarily-zineish things that are going on in my life.

The past few weeks have been an assortment of tests and appointments with my doctor. After plenty of discussions, we were both all but convinced that I had lupus. That’s what everything pointed to, so we waited until I had a ‘flare’ of symptoms so we could do the relevant blood tests. Blood tests that came back negative. (With the exception of microcytic anemia, but that’s not an indicator of lupus.)

So we went over my history again and came to the conclusion that I need to start doing what I can do for fibromyalgia, ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis – commonly known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome but is so much more complicated than that), and restless legs syndrome.

Fibromyalgia and ME have come up as possibilities many times in the past ten years or so, but they are “diagnoses of exclusion” and I have never pursued the relevant testing. (I don’t always stick my head in the sand, but when I do…) Turns out that it took a mere ten years, and we’ve done all the testing to come around to the conclusion anyway.

What does all of this mean?

It means that, while these symptoms have been with me for many years, now they have a name. No I know it’s not just all in my head, that I’m not just lazy, and that I can’t keep operating as if it will all go away.

In many ways, this is a relief. I’ve never been good at taking care of myself, and having names for the faces, so to say, means that I feel less guilty about self-care. I’ve been going slower, going to bed earlier, sleeping in, puttering rather than mad rushing, and educating myself about the conditions. (And let me tell you, just keeping my feet and legs warm at all times has made a heap of difference.)

If I have my way, nothing will change here – other than I will endeavour to stop apologising for late posts or days when I don’t post. What will change is how I look at things, how I organise my time – especially my rest – and how I go about my days. Mostly things you won’t see or hear about.

Like I said, though, I want this space to be one in which we have conversations. Conversations that include what’s going on in my life even when it doesn’t focus on zines.

I wish you all the best for your week. I’ll be back with reviews on Thursday and Friday (99% sure that’s going to happen), calls for subs this weekend, and next week I will have a fresh happy mail post for you.

Until then…

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Calling Zine Makers, Libraries, Distros, And the Like

I’m at the very beginning stages of working on a new zine project. As part of this, I would like to include A5/A6 spaces (maybe even A7, if that works for you) that feature things like:

*Zines that have a rolling call for submissions (even if your zine changes theme/topic from issue to issue, an overarching ‘flier’ for the whole series would be awesome)
*Zine distros – whether you want to say ‘check out my distro’, are looking for zines to sell in your distro, or both!
*Zine libraries – again, whether it’s a ‘check us out’, ‘looking for zine donations’, or both, I’d love to see it
*Zine people who want to be included in an ‘open to trades’ section. I’m thinking name, preferred contact (or your mailing addy, if that’s the way you roll), and a few likes/dislikes.

The key thing here is that things be ‘undated’ (hence sharing a zine series rather than one specific call for submissions) so things aren’t out of date before I get the chance to create the thing.

Ideally, I’d like things to be images with text on them because of the limited space involved (with the exception of the trades section, which will be text only). But I want to be flexible, too. This project is really in its early days, so I’m still figuring a lot out.

If you want to get involved straight away (please do!) then you can shoot me an email (theauthor at inkyblots.com)