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International Zine Month Days 13-16

Hello zine beans!

I apologise for being MIA for the past few days. No mail arrived in the post box over the past week, and I also decided to take a page from Feral Publication’s book and focus on things that needed attention.

I recently started therapy, and it’s my habit to push aside my ‘homework’ and myself. I’m trying to change that, and that means getting behind in other things sometimes.

So let’s catch up, shall we?

International Zine Month Day 13 – Very Zine Superstitious

The activity for this day is to make up a zine superstition and share it. Last year I wrote about putting positivity into your zine master copy by the light of the moon…

For this year’s superstition, I declare that one must have an odd number of black writing instruments when starting to make a zine for the zine-making process to go smoothly. ^_^

International Zine Month Day 14 – ValenZines Day

On this fine Valenzines Day, the activity is to give yourself some zine love in whatever way it means to you.

I started my ValenZines Day with a hot cup of tea and candle with a hot bubble bath. I do like to read and even review zines in the bath. I know there are people who don’t like baths, but I love being surrounded by warmth and the lovely smells of the candle(s) and/or bubble bath.

Nichole of Pieces zine fame posted on Instagram about taking yourself out for a date, so I decided to extend my day a bit. I took myself out on a date to the Murray River.

Fresh air, a gorgeous day, zines to read… Take the little moments of bliss when you can.

International Zine Month Day 15 – Free Zine Day

Free zine day! On this day of International Zine Month, the activity is to give away zines or leave them in public places for strangers to find.

I’m falling back on my Missives From Murray Bridge mailout for this one. However, if you don’t receive the Missives already, I’ll send some out to the first five people who email me their mailing address to seagreenzines at gmail.com

Hehe!

International Zine Month Day 16 – Zine Love List

And now we are caught up to today – a day of zine love! Make a list of reasons you love zines and share it with others.

As you can imagine, I could go on and on about this all day. Zines mean so much to me in keeping me going when it’s tough, making me feel less alone, giving me purpose… Oh, gosh, I’ve started making my list, haven’t I?

*Variety in topic and approach. Zines come in so many shapes and sizes as well as pretty much every topic under the sun. There are no limits, and that can be such a horrible thing for a lot of other areas. But for zines, I have seen so utterly much good come of it.

*Sharing is caring. While I feel like last year there were a lot of new, fresh starts in zinemaking and a lot of new zinemakers learning and joining up, I feel like this year has been a bit more about collaborations. Collab zines and other collaborative projects, people reviewing each others’ work, and working together in a myriad of different ways. Zines give people an opportunity to connect and find each other in a unique way. Beautiful.

Two doesn’t precisely make a list, but these are the closest to my heart and mind at the moment.

That is me for today, zine beans. I will be back soon with more zine goodness. Until then…

Others Joining In:

* Hadass: https://hadass420.wordpress.com/
* Phoebe’s Zines: https://www.instagram.com/phoebeszines/
* Feral Publication: https://youtu.be/trS6pVtjsjw
* Enter the Papernet: http://www.enterthepaper.net/

Let me know if/where you are joining in!

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Call for Submissions: The Rock N’ Roll Horror Zine

The Rock N’ Roll Horror Zine
Submissions Now Open

Looking for rock, metal and punk themed horror, sci-fi, pulp and bizarro fiction submissions up to 2,500 words. Also interested in visual art submissions that are on theme, especially cover art.

Accepted submissions receive $5 and a contributor copy.

Email submissions to doomgoat666@gmail.com

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Zine Review: As Above, So Below

As Above, So Below
iestyn
https://www.instagram.com/iesorno/
https://zinelove.wordpress.com/
https://ko-fi.com/W7W2V5BK

As Above, So Below is a horizontal A6 full-colour zine about walking, identity, and mental health combined with the 39 Steps Project.

I think it’s easy to forget sometimes the depths that other people have. We take them at face value, for granted, because it’s easier than constantly reminding ourselves that everyone has a deep and complex past. Perhaps that’s why I love perzines so much. I can find something in common with a complete stranger or learn something new about a friend – even when it breaks my hear to do so.

The 39 Steps Project is a photo challenge in which you capture an image for every step you take for 39 steps. In As Above, So Below, iestyn takes the project a bit further with taking one photo above them and one at his feet for each step. iestyn takes us on a walk while contemplating the act of walking itself. While doing so, he also explores his past, his feelings in relation to other people, and his sense of identity.

“I am a person… who’s so threatened by his own sense of being a fraud.”

iestyn’s words hit my heart directly as many of my own thoughts and feelings travel in the same direction. I’m not someone who particularly likes walking, but that doesn’t by any means take away the visual metaphor of taking the reader with him in his vulnerable contemplations. This is one of those zines where I found myself wishing I could give the zinemaker a hug.

I love the idea of the 39 Steps Project and how iestyn has used it in this perzine, giving a visual look at the world through his eyes and giving a written one at the same time.

As Above, So Below is a great, heart-squeezing zine with a lot of elements woven together wonderfully. Definitely one to check out.

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International Zine Month Day 12 – ZineWiki Day… Sort Of

Hello and happiest of Fridays to you zine beans!

It’s a cold and blustery one here at the zine cave, but these are the days that make it easy to stay inside rugged up warm to get work done. There’s always a lot of admin to do here in the cave, that’s for sure. Perhaps I should call it the zine office or the last zine post on the right or something like that. Haha. Ideas welcome.

Today for this the 12th day of International Zine Month is Zine Wiki Day.

ZineWiki.com! Your one stop spot for a huge directory of zines, the people who make them, and much more.

Unfortunately… It’s not exactly working properly at the moment, and getting a hold of the people who might be able to fix it is proving difficult.

You can sort of see some pages if you know the full URL of a page. For example: http://www.zinewiki.com/Jaime_Nyx It’s not exactly the easiest to look at and definitely isn’t how it’s supposed to be.

ZineWiki is an amazing source of information, and I truly, truly hope that whoever runs it will be able to get it back to its formal glory. So instead of creating a Wiki page, we can take the day to find and compile all sorts of zine spaces and places. I know my resources page could use a bit of sprucing up, so if you know of something you would like to see added to that page, please let me know.

I’ll be back soon with the Friday zine review!

Others Joining In:

* Hadass: https://hadass420.wordpress.com/
* Phoebe’s Zines: https://www.instagram.com/phoebeszines/
* Feral Publication: https://youtu.be/trS6pVtjsjw
* Enter the Papernet: http://www.enterthepaper.net/

Let me know if/where you are joining in!

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Zine Review: Pieces 14 / International Zine Month Day 11

Today’s International Zine Month activity is to buy, share, or read zines from a country other than your own, which has just so nicely happened to land on a zine review day. So today I bring you a review of a zine by the US zinemaker Nichole.

Pieces 14: on the Demon
Nichole
https://www.instagram.com/corridorgirl/
https://www.etsy.com/shop/collectingwords

Pieces 14 is a US ¼ sized black and white perzine about mental illness, constructions and coping creations, and learning to take control.

“Everything about this is disjointed and, in places, extremely brief… but it will at least exist. That is something positive.”

Sometimes while I may want to read a zine straight away, I know I can’t. I know I need to keep it unread for a while until I can give it the reading time and space – both physically and mentally – that it deserves. Copies of Pieces always fall into this category, and, knowing something of how much it took Nichole to create Pieces 14, it was especially true of this issue.

This feeling is emphasised right from the start, as Nichole calls this zine many things from self-indulgent to frightening and intimate. She reveals herself as utterly vulnerable and unsure – questioning (as I think many a perzine writer has) the motivation in making in the first place. And yet this is exactly why I see Nichole as so strong for sharing.

After the opening, Nichole moves onto Shadow Work: the process by which Nichole reclaims the parts of her she finds unacceptable, immoral, and ugly (and a concept I find incredibly intriguing). She writes about the three ways to approach the practise and how most people seek to avoid these self-truths.

From there we travel with Nichole as she explores many things under the umbrella of Self and Identity. With a focus on mental health issues, Nichole touches on thoughts and fears around not being ‘sick enough’ to seek help while at the same time fearing being ‘sick enough’ to have help forced upon you. The frantic search to find meaning and definition while not letting anyone in to help you with the search lest you become a burden,

Counselling, sexuality, fear, shame, the masks we wear, and much more are parts of Nichole’s mental journey looking back and pondering forward about life. A huge part of the writing focuses on the creations we create to cope and how these creations can be just as complex as we are. That they can both harm and hurt. Though, while I type that, I feel like that is a rather ‘light’ description of the contents of this zine.

“I was so obsessed with being perfect and being a good girl that I didn’t know what to do with all the “bad” stuff.”

As per usual with an issue of Pieces, I could go on and on about how much I identify with what Nichole has written. There were times I had to stop and go back to re-read paragraphs because I was so eager that I started reading too fast for my brain to keep up.

Nichole’s layouts are always appealing with just enough elements for variety and visual appeal without taking away from the important subject at hand. With a natural affinity for images of butterflies and clocks, I fall just as easily into the visuals Nichole chooses as well as the words.

An especially powerful part of this zine is Nichole’s acknowledgments of her constructs and the importance of distinguishing what is a part of you – what is something you have created within yourself. Taking control of your own creations is often not anywhere as easy as it would seem to be on paper. Taking back your power sometimes means taking it back from the pieces of yourself.

“Waging war against yourself is tiring.”

Pieces is a zine series I have long enjoyed reading and gained more understanding from than I can really say. If enjoying all the zines that came before a particular one is a bias, then I most certainly have it with this, the 14th in the series. That being said, I think this issue of Pieces stands alongside one that Nichole actually doesn’t print anymore. It’s an issue in which Nichole challenges herself to not only examine the topics in the zine but the challenge of putting it all down on the page.

As per usual, I’m grateful that she has done so. Pieces 14 and the issues before it have and continue to give me the courage to talk about things that I’ve dealt with for nearly three decades and never told a soul…

To put it simply, get Pieces 14 and all the ones that came before it.

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International Zine Month Day 10 – Write to a Zinemaker

Hello, dear and wonderful zine friends!

I’m thinking zine friend Hadass really has the smart way of it by writing a weekly round up blog post covering International Zine Month fun rather than posting every day. Haha.

Admin got the best of me yesterday, and I missed posting here. However, one thing I did do was send out a zine order to the amazing aforementioned zine-making Hadass. Another thing I did was mail out a package of goodness to my amazing zine-making friend Black Wolf! The fun with that one is that her birthday is coming up* so she got pressies as well.

So do zine-making mail sends make up for not writing a letter? I hope so. Haha.

I’m taking my own advice for today and not stressing about something that is meant to be fun. So no stress, and yay for fun mail!

That will be me, but only for a little while. There’s a review to come.

Until then…

*Fun fact – Black Wolf and I have five days different between our birthdays, and our partners have birthdays that are also only five days apart. O_O Spooooky.

Others Joining In:

* Hadass: https://hadass420.wordpress.com/
* Phoebe’s Zines: https://www.instagram.com/phoebeszines/
* Feral Publication: https://youtu.be/trS6pVtjsjw
* Enter the Papernet: http://www.enterthepaper.net/

Let me know if/where you are joining in!

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International Zine Month Day 9 – Zine Penpals

Happy Tuesday, zine friends. And what a beautiful day it has been here in this small part of Oz.

Perfect for writing letters in the sunshine!

Today’s activity for International Zine Month is to write to a zine penpal! I’m very, very happy to have zine penpals near and far, and one of the ways I keep in contact with them is my Missives From Murray Bridge.

Missives From Murray Bridge is my monthly newsletter containing bits and bobs from what’s happening in and around the zine cave. I think newsletters are a great way to share happy mail and keep up with what friends are doing and what they care to share. You can include personal letters along with them, stickers, ephemera, other fun.

Happy mail all the way.

If you’re interested in getting onto the Missives mailing list, check out my Patreon page or send an email. 😛

Who are you writing to today? Let me know in the comments.

Until next time…

Others Joining In:

* Hadass: https://hadass420.wordpress.com/
* Phoebe’s Zines: https://www.instagram.com/phoebeszines/
* Feral Publication: https://youtu.be/trS6pVtjsjw
* Enter the Papernet: http://www.enterthepaper.net/

Let me know if/where you are joining in!

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International Zine Month Day 8 – Zine Recipe Day

Hello once again, dear zine friends! It’s another double-post day with it being Happy Mail Monday and all, but they both came together quite well this year…

For today’s activity, we cook with a recipe found in a zine!

In previous years, this day has been a bit of a mixed bag as far as having the time, energy, and ingredients to make a recipe found in a zine. The same goes for this year, too. I had good intentions, but filming and then editing Happy Mail Monday always takes the day and wears me out.

However, the timing was so utterly beautiful that I can’t resist spinning the activity just a little bit to put a spotlight on a specific zine that landed in the mail today:

Vegan Spoonie Food by Zappix Art!

Timing, right? Landing in the post box on just the right day. Hehe! And with some delicious sounding recipes inside as well. (Pancakes? Banana bread? Yes, please!)

I am sorry I didn’t actually get around to making myself any of these recipes, but I figure shining a spotlight on a lovely artist has to be the next best thing.

And with that, I bid you all a good night (Australia time)! I’ll be back tomorrow with some letter-writing goodness. Until then…

Others Joining In:

* Hadass: https://hadass420.wordpress.com/
* Phoebe’s Zines: https://www.instagram.com/phoebeszines/
* Feral Publication: https://youtu.be/trS6pVtjsjw
* Enter the Papernet: http://www.enterthepaper.net/

Let me know if/where you are joining in!