Street Corner. Two in the Morning. Getting a Taxi Home

Well hopefully if you read this blog then you'll know already that my issue of The Terrible Zodin is now up and running and ready for free download.

If you didn't know then get ye too it quick! HERE

As promised in the issue I will begin a series of posts describing how the issue was put together and perhaps it may inspire some of you out there to do your own fanzine!

A word of warning first though, it has to be a labour of love. Because there comes a point where you think it may drive you insane or crazy but you push through because you love it.

I had a blast putting the issue together don't get me wrong but right at the very end everything that could go wrong did go wrong. The formatting went weird if you made changes to fonts in one section it would change fonts completely unrelated in another section. Ad nauseum! Paragraphs went askew for no discernable reason. Word kept crashing. The file got corrupted. It wouldn't convert to a PDF. Internet connection went down. When we finally converted it that was corrupt too. Readers couldn't download a copy.

I took Annual Leave from work to ensure it would go out on time but then something happened at work (can't really talk about it) which meant a huge chunk of my time off was nontheless spent on my day job because I had to check in with my staff and get updates on the situation etc.

It was a very frustrateing 48 hours, the zine came out late, I felt demoralised and like I'd let Leslie down and the readers down. I wanted to tear my hair out and/or throw myself out a window. The version that is uploaded has only been spell checked up to Page 73, I keep cringing at all the typos after that but everytime I go to the original on Word it crashed if I try to make changes after that page.

Now that it's out there and the feedback has slowly been trickling in and it's generally positive. I guess people need time to read it all and absorb it but I did get guilty of sitting there hitting refresh dying for someone to leave a comment.

I will do another one one day but I better appreciate now just how much work Leslie put in to it in the past and how much graft it is putting it all together. The positive comments and the willingness of people to contribute to the zine and to keep contributing (We've already had several people contact us about being in #9) really does help. I really was blue on Saturday morning and feeling like I'd wrecked the zine and no one would ever read it again.

Don't let any of that put you off! That was just the final 48 hours and was due to stuff outside my control. The rest of the time spent putting it together, contacting people, reading the submissions and generally being emmersed in the zine was fab and allowed me 19 years after I first thought of doing so, to put together a Doctor Who fanzine.

I'm very thankful to Leslie for entrusting me with The Terrible Zodin. I hope you all enjoy the issue.