A Long Way to Go Yet March 7, 2008 – Posted in: Sybil's Garage

The print shop where it all began

A few years ago I worked at a print shop in Hoboken, getting familiar with Photoshop, Illustrator, and, in general, printing techniques. Around this time too I became familiar with zines a friend of mine brought to my writers group, ones like Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and Electric Velocipede. And I thought, hey, I’m in the perfect place to create one of my own. So, when the boss was out, I got to work. I had solicited stories from several of my friends and laid them out on a letter-sized fold-over. I made forty copies and quickly distributed them all.

So I had so much fun doing it, that I decided to do it again. But this time I put an ad up on Craigslist soliciting stories from the New York metro area. Someone, somehow, got word to Ralan of Ralan.com, and he emailed me and asked if I’d like to list my market. Well…, I said, that depends. If you put this listing on your site, I’m going to get way more submissions than I’ll have time to read. Let me see if I can get some help. I asked my writers group, and about half of them said, yes, we’d love to read for you. That was the beginning of Sybil’s Garage No. 2.

It’s hard to believe that just five short years later we’re coming out with our fifth issue, with a color cover no less, that the stories and poems therein received honorable mentions in The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror not once but twice, that the magazine has been entered into the Hoboken Historical Museum’s permanent collection, that we’ve received orders from as far away as Singapore and Brazil. It’s quite mind blowing, actually.

Which brings me to where we are today. Just yesterday I sent the electronic copy of issue five to the printer, and I expect to have copies in hand in two weeks. It’s been a long, fun road, and the best fact of all is that we’re not at the destination. No, this little zine’s got a long way to go yet.