Alt Wire is a morning digest of links and information collected and explained by a different guest blogger every weekday. Today’s guest is publisher and playwright David LaBounty of Blue Cubicle Press.We asked him for five links. Here’s what happened:
With two kids and one computer, I’m lucky if I’m allowed time to update my own sites. Here is one site I visit every day, and four others I wish I could frequent more often.
The Morning Post: Every morning for almost two years, rain, snow, or moonlight, I donned my paperboy bag and delivered The Washington Post to Suburbia. I hated it: early mornings, loud dogs, scary garden gnomes, newsprint-covered hands, and falling asleep in English class. Sundays, when I could only carry four papers at a time, I would think to myself: “There has got to be a better way to do this.” However, a bond grew between the paper and me. After I finished my route, I would sit at the kitchen table and read the comics (three pages!) while I ate my bowl of cereal. No matter where I’ve lived, I’d try to find a copy to read – it’s as close to a hometown paper as I ever had. Twenty years later, I still start every morning with a bowl of cereal and The Post – online. I feel a little guilty for contributing to print’s demise, but I’m sure it’ll be a hell of a lot easier to deliver.
Atomic Baltimore: I love every bookstore that carries our journals, but only one has a blog I follow: Atomic Books in Baltimore. If I didn’t think print was dead, I’d start my own bookstore, and I’d model it after Atomic.
Meet Fwis: Will you be able to judge an electronic book by its cover? Thankfully, we have a few months to worry about that. (Album art is already dead – no more hours ‘studying’ Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy.) For now, we can judge real book covers courtesy of the gang at Fwis. The discussions are usually as interesting as the covers.
Teen Zine Clubs and More: For the moment, print is still alive – in Montana. Slumgullion is a “publishing collaboration project that strives to create community, empower young voices, and promote literacy and the humanities through the book arts and zines.” They run a Teen Zine Club and a bicycle-powered bookmobile. If they had been around when I lived there, I never would have left.
Get Published: We started The First Line because there were few publications available for new writers. Now, thanks to the interwebs, there is no shortage of magazines willing to read your prose or poetry. (Good or bad? Discuss.) Duotrope is a wonderful, simple site that filters out the noise and allows you to find publications (even print ones) for your masterpieces.
BIO: David LaBounty is an editor by day and a playwright by night. His plays have appeared on stages both large and small, and with his wife, Robin, he runs Blue Cubicle Press, home of the literary magazines The First Line, Workers Write!, and Overtime.
