The long hiatus is over:
A chunk of time has passed since I posted anything here, but my life got busy in other ways than cooking. Recipe testing slowed down. I’ve been cooking just the staples to get both the Spouse and I through our day.
Last January I suffered a fractured toe. I couldn’t drive, or walk, or even stand for very long. But with all that time on my hands, I thought, “Why not create some new zines? No! Let’s create micro zines.” The first question I asked myself was “How do I take all this research I’ve done about food and put it into zine format?” The answer came, and I made several micro zines about individual spices.
I have a complement of seven so far, with an eye to creating more. Trust me when I tell you that was a ton of work! Once I established a consistent format, I worked on the information part of the zines. It includes history, uses, and a recipe. I do intend to make a full zine about spices that covers general information. A few of the spices, like saffron, will have a full-size zine format. There’s way too much information about this age old spice to stuff into a small zine.
I announced the finished product through Facebook in March. And just by letting people know I had created the Spices series, I made online sales even before traveling to the Denver Zine Fest where they made their official debut. People seemed to love them.
A little Background
In the mid-1990’s I got involved with the DIY publishing community {which included Zines) in Tucson. I even helped create a zine with my girlfriend at the time. And I started the poetry project Catharsis. A full manuscript of poetry I wrote between 1977 thru 1998.
It wasn’t a stretch to latch onto the idea of self-publishing. I had already published two poetry chapbooks and one full length book of Poetry, and two Recipe Zines that we were trying to call “cookbooks”. When my spouse finally turned onto the zine community, they were looking at the cookbooks, looked at me, looked back at the books and said “The cook books, they really are zines.” And I just nodded my head. Yep. Zines.
Since then, I’ve created a few other zines. A personal zine, photography micro zines, I would sell them out of hand at storytelling and poetry events around town. But it was time to take a deeper dive. I was encouraged to apply to my first zine fest . I sent the application out and was accepted. Armed with all my zines, I tabled at Kansas City Zine Con, 2018. And I sold stuff! It was so exciting, a rush, to have people give me money for what I created. A lot of sweat and dollars went into making those recipe zines.
What I love about zines is that they are a great way to disseminate information and to put your vision out there without having to go through an agent and publisher. If you can get to a typewriter or word program and a printer, you can make a zine. It’s Underground. Radical. And fits my mostly punk, mostly anarchist attitude towards getting published.
Getting the Word out
Zine Fests have had a resurgence in the last couple of years. Like veg fests, zine fests are growing exponentially, not just in the States, but around the world. After tabling at Kansas City last fall I loved it so much I looked into other events in my region. This year I have applied to and was accepted at the Omaha, Denver and Albuquerque Zine Fests as well as KC again.
If you are interested, here’s the link where you can order a set of Spices micro zines. Not only will you receive the greatest little micro zines around, I’ll hit you up with a bonus zine of my choosing. Plus you get the satisfaction of knowing that you are supporting independent writers and independent publishing. And independent thinkers.
And I’m still working on that third Recipe Zine. Look for a release in the spring of 2019!
If you want to see me in person, I’ll be at Kansas City ZineCon, September 8th, 2018. And then at the Albuquerque Zine Fest in New Mexico on October 6th, 2018.
