Psychedelia Gothique

Type 1: Small Press - non-paying, token paying & low paying markets for fiction, article, reviews, poetry, and art.   I have seen writers and artists get angry at non-paying markets, as if their very existence is an affront! If you are one of those, then please - stop being such an asshole. Sure, writers wanting to give their work away for free can just do it on Wattpad. But, especially when you're first starting out, there’s something nice about having your work selected for inclusion by an actual editor. There is credibility and validation in having your publication at least “juried” by a third party. And every once in a while, works from those publications get singled out for further honours and/or republished in paying markets. For those who consider those markets beneath them – remember that the publishers and editors of those publications are most likely making less than you. Yes –  less than zero ie: paying all expenses out of pocket. Many small press mag...

As I get closer to completing  Avenging Glory ,  you’d think I would have the path ahead mapped out. After all, I’ve been writing for decades, have researched the markets exhaustively, have lots of friends who are published authors, and know a few publishers and agents personally. But the truth is, only a few of those people I know are happy with the paths they’ve taken. And number of people who used to be happy, are no longer satisfied. The number of potential routes have multiplied to the point where it’s fair to say that all or any of us can get published – but hardly any of us will get noticed outside our circles of friends, or adequately paid for all the hard work we’ve put in. Many of the publishers are flying by the seat of their pants. Or doing it as a labour of love. And there are almost as many publishing models out there as there are publishers. Before submitting the book to major publishers, I need to think seriously about getting an agent. There...

I have always voted, and at the age of 17, even campaigned for Liberal candidate Mel Hurtig in Edmonton. He lost by a landslide to a career politician whose major claim to fame was the two months he spent as the House of Commons speaker who refused to allow an emergency debate on the American deployment of Bomarc  missiles on Canadian soil - thus bringing the minority Conservative government crashing down.   I lost respect for politics and most politicians, at around the time that Hurtig made his unmemorable exit - an attitude that my eight month stint working for the government in BC in the nineties failed to change. I remember two different Social Credit ministers during my short time there, and neither of them impressed me as people who cared about anything beyond getting elected and appointed to cabinet in the first place. I guess they wanted to be perceived by the electorate as doing a good job, but not enough to, you know, actually do a good job. They were surprisingly...