deathly musings

It’s been a while since I blogged about The Death Mook. Dion and I met at the Sleepers Almanac launch and went off after to chat about our own launch. We both want to do something a little out of the ordinary. (I’ve found that my favourite launches are the ones that don’t do extended readings - I have a really hard time following whole short stories being read out in particular. Especially if there’s booze involved. That’s why at The Sex Mook launch and at the Mini Shots Fed Square event last year I had the writers read excerpts only. That way it’s easy to keep the energy high!) Anyway, we had a little brainstorm and hit on an idea that would be a little unusual and also fitting to the theme… and it’s on Halloween, remember. Now we just need to pull it together (here’s hoping!).

We’ve now commissioned pretty much all of our non-fic stuff and articles are rolling on in. Dion keeps sending me through updated time schedules and changes - we have not yet mastered the art of doing everything on time, all the time! But the commissioning process has taken longer than expected. We want to get it as perfect as possible, and commissioning is the time to do it.

One of the hardest things so far has been deciding what articles and other non-fic stuff we wanted - and could fit. Good stuff just kept rolling in, and it was often really difficult to choose one idea over another. We could easily have filled the mook already - and that was before we’ve even looked at creative submissions!

One of the hard things about commissioning articles is you’re betting on an idea rather than, with short stories say, a completed product. So the idea has to be outstanding and you also need to know that the author will follow through with something as amazing as promised. Which makes commissioning hard sometimes. Plus we’ve spent aaagggeees balancing stuff against what we had already decided on. Would including an article on alternative meats be overkill when we’ve already got roadkill? Do we have too much literary-related stuff? And as ever, the mook will feature pieces from more experienced writers and new writers alike.

We’re still accepting creative submissions (fiction, lists, illustrations, Venn diagrams and the like) until 20 March. And then it will become like a big jigsaw puzzle!

L.

mook update

Dion and I had another meeting over a long brunch at Ray* about The Mook. I think we got about 80 pitches all up and loads of them were quirky, weird and strange - just the way we like ‘em. So far our topics are as wide-ranging as roadkill, saints and suicide, and surprisingly enough we got practically no pitches on murder, vampires/zombies/monsters or sex. The mook is slowly taking form - the main features are locked in and several shorter articles as well, and some fun stuff. Dion is busy commissioning articles and doing organisational stuff like making spreadsheets to keep track of everything. Oh, the glamour.

Once most of the writers are commissioned we’ll be asking for creative submissions. There will definitely be more pictures/illustrations in this mook (Dion wants colour, I don’t know if the budget will stretch, an impasse looms…) - and the ‘unsealed section’ will remain.

*Out of this world soy lattes and hot wait staff, is there any better place to work?

L.

reading pitches

Dion and I got together a few days ago to talk about the death mook. Pitches have been rolling in and there’s some really great, quirky ideas being thrown around. Roadkill, anyone? (My favourite pitch so far!)

We talked a lot about what we want the mook to be, in what ways will it be similar to The Sex Mook and in what ways will it be different. Do we want to include poetry and short stories in this one, for example? Do we want more pictures/photos? What other kinds of writing could we include - reviews? The brainstorming is still going but as we read pitches and talk about them a more solid idea of it is emerging.

We extended the final date for pitches as well, you can see details on dion’s blog. We’ll be asking for creative stuff a little later on - once we’ve figured out what kinds of things we think we want!

L.

gimme a gimmick

Lots of people have congratulated me on putting out a book about sex. It’s a good gimmick, they say. And yeah, I guess it kind of is a bit gimmicky, splashing a bright red cover with the word SEX. But the idea for the mook didn’t start there. The way sex is portrayed in the media has been a longterm annoyance to me, and I wanted to work on a project that really inspires me, and that addresses the issue in some small way. As a small publishing outfit I guess you need to find ways to balance projects you want to work on with commercial viability and the mook certainly struck a good balance for Vignette.

L.

more mooks coming

What began as a stand-alone project, The Sex Mook, has morphed into something else… we were about three quarters of the way through production when I started thinking about bringing out another issue of the mook. We were getting such a great response to the concept of The Sex Mook and having such a good time putting it together that it seemed like a natural idea to bring out another one. And so as the first mook is being launched, the second is already in the works.

There’s another talented young editor at the helm, Dion, who I met through myspace of all places (ah, those heady pre-facebook days) and another great topic - death.

It’s quite weird to be thinking ahead and planning number two when there’s still lots of work being done on number one. But all systems are go on The Death Mook, and I’m going to be blogging about the whole process here on this blog (note the new category over to the left, production).

L.