"It’s the first rule of magazine publishing: Have an identity. There are way, way too many magazines of all kinds out there on the bookstore shelves for a publisher to be able to get away for long with producing a magazine that isn’t uniquely appealing. So we sat down and looked at the Wildside magazines after I arrived, and we decided that their looks weren’t quite evoking their distinct editorial missions — and we needed to address that."
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"I’ve gotten a little superstitious about listening to music when I write. Once a story is going somewhere, I keep listening to the same music whenever I work on that story. It seems to help me keep in voice, and alternatively, if I need to make some kind of dramatic shift, I’ll go and put on something different to shake myself awake, out of that particular set of rhythms. When I’m starting a story, I try to listen to music that’s going to help evoke a certain emotional space or speed or kind of complexity or spareness or loneliness that I want to access for story reasons. I guess it’s like inviting a story to dinner — you want to seduce that story into doing what you want it to do, and so you have to set the mood with the right music." Continue reading
The story goes something like this: One sunny early autumn day I was strolling down Third Street in Hoboken, heading towards Washington Street when I happened upon a small gate sale. I browsed the various items for a few minutes when a home-grown magazine from the late 70s called Time Machine caught my eye.Full of beautiful engravings and drawings from the early 20th century, as well as letters from Buckminster Fuller and other notables, articles of opinion, comedy, and history, the magazines begged to be purchased. And each of these treasures was only $1. I grabbed the lot of them and went to buy, when an innocent looking man named Jim said, "Oh, you like those? I got more in the back." Continue reading
