About Writers Monthly

January 1, 2004

This issue marks the beginning of the third year of publishing Writers Monthly.

In 2003, more than 108,000 pages of the Writers Monthly online magazine were read by more than 40,000 unique daily visitors.

Like, wow.

How did this happen? How did we get here?

In winter of 2001, shortly after launching Writers Monthly, I met Jessica Clark. Jessica is the most beautiful woman you can imagine. Someday, as Jessica's third novel is climbing the New York Times Bestseller List, Oprah will interview her. Oprah will be smitten and want to be Jessica's friend and confidant. Jessica is that kind of person. And writer. Jessica's column, The Coach's Corner is my favorite.

Jessica Clark's friend, the literary agent Kris Wallace, is the most beautiful woman you can imagine. For an all too brief time, Kris wrote a column for WM. Then she went and got pregnant and discovered that raising a family with her husband John,who is the most beautiful man you can imagine, was a hell of a lot more rewarding than all the other adventures life was offering. Kris's column, An Agent's View, is my favorite.

In spring of 2001 I met Terrie Leigh Relf. Our meeting was a happy accident. (In typically sloppy and serendipitous poet-fashion, Terrie wrote a letter to someone else but mistakenly sent it to me. When I sent her letter back, Terrie sent me a new letter informing me that she had decided to be the Poetry Editor of Writers Monthly.) Terrie is the most beautiful woman you can imagine. She takes kung fu classes and writes poetry all night long. (Terrie is an insomniac) When not Kung Fuing or writing poetry, Terrie seduces anemic painters and muscular automobile mechanics half her age and experience. Because of Terrie, Writers Monthly has poets up its wazoo. Terrie's column, The Poet's Workshop, is my favorite.

Terrie Relf introduced me to Chris Baron. Chris Baron is the most beautiful man you can imagine. He looks like he should be playing middle linebacker for the Green Bay Packers, but he's a poet and a teacher and a bit of a daydreamer. Chris told me he had this strange idea of writing a series of letters to his eighth grade teacher as a column for Writers Monthly. He was too big to say no to. Chris's column, Letters to Mr. DePrado, is my favorite.

Then I got a letter from a young woman who had just graduated from Carnegie-Mellon and moved from Pittsburgh to San Diego. When I met Rebecca McCadney she was broke, unemployed, and depending on the kindness of strangers. She was also the most beautiful woman you can imagine. Now Rebecca is engaged to be married, employed, part owner of a condo, guardian of a dog with unidentifiable ancestors, and writing a column for Writers Monthly. Rebecca, as I so often remind her, owes everything she now has to her decision to bless Writers Monthly with her hard work. The day Rebecca leaves Writers Monthly, as I so often tell her, everything good in her life will disintegrate. Rebecca's column, Word on Film, is my favorite.

Of all the many wonderful things Rebecca McCadney has done for Writers Monthly, the very best thing she did was to attend the Southern California Writers Conference with all the Writers Monthly crew. There, not content to drink too much and seek out and seduce wary agents, as the rest of us were doing, Rebecca sought out and seduced a real live professional editor with amazing insight and skills–the kind of editor that every serious writer yearns for and would benefit immensely from working with. Rebecca convinced Elizabeth Baldwin to join Writers Monthly. Elizabeth Baldwin is the most beautiful woman you can imagine. Every Piece and Every Author that Elizabeth has brought to Writers Monthly is my favorite. Click here to read Elizabeth's Favorite Stories Published by Writers Monthly in 2003.

After reading the early issues of Writers Monthly Melanie Jennings wrote to me and told me in no uncertain terms that Writers Monthly would be a much better publication if she were doing a column of book reviews of New York Times bestsellers for us. Of course, she was right. Melanie Jennings is keenly observant, keeps her own council, asks rude, intrusive questions without ever offering any information about herself, and is always manipulating people to see how far they will go under her spell, then going home and putting their foolishness into the amazing stories and novels she writes. Melanie Jennings is also the most beautiful woman you can imagine. Her column, Diamonds and Raspberries, is my favorite. Her other column, On Writing Books, is also my favorite. And each of Melanie's stories that I've so far been able to trick her into allowing us to publish on Writers Monthly (e.g., Bones, Waiting with Jo-Jo, and Home) is my favorite.

Christopher Mahon is the most beautiful man you can imagine. He wrote a thoughtful, insightful, deeply courteous letter to me posing the question, Is conflict necessary in fiction? The answer to this was so obvious that I wanted very much to punch Chris in the nose. But I sublimated, and wrote back suggesting Chris write an essay exploring the question. He already had. He sent it to me. It was so good it made me—for one-half second—question my pigheaded certainty. Then Chris wrote another thoughtful, insightful, deeply courteous letter to me in which he used Zen Mind Melding Manipulation Techniques to make me believe that Writers Monthly could not go on unless Chris joined us. His column, Art of the Memoir, is my favorite.

Somewhere around this time, Leah Peterson sent a bizarre essay to Writers Monthly that everyone who read it liked. Except me. This is because I am immensely jealous of immensely talented people and always claim that everyone's writing sucks. Except mine. Fortunately, Writers Monthly had grown so much by now that Elizabeth and Rebecca and Melanie told me to hire Leah Peterson. I always do what women tell me to do. Leah Peterson is the most beautiful woman you can imagine. In reading her column, I have been transported to amazing places. My favorite place Leah took me was into department store dressing rooms where nubile teenaged girls were trying on bras. Sigh… Leah's column, Stories Overheard, is my favorite.

About this time I did something really stoopid, even for me. In one of the irregular Writers Monthly staff meetings I said, "Hey, kids. Let's put on a show!" (Actually, I said, "What if we have a party and invite everyone in the world?") If only someone had been smart enough to just buy me another beer and smoothly change the conversation while I was distracted. Instead, they all said, "Cool!" Thus began the saga of the Writers Monthly Anti-Socials. Fortunately, Chris Johnson and Charles Lamb, owners of the Best Little Idea Store in San Diego, Current Affairs Bookstore, magically appeared to host the events.

I will never forget the very first moment I ever saw Suzi Schweikert at the first ever Anti-Social, back in May. Suzi Schweikert is a doctor, a children's book author and has written a very practical book that I will never read, The Pregnant Traveler. Suzi Schweikert is also the most beautiful woman you can imagine. I vaguely remember asking Suzi, "Why don't you write a column for Writers Monthly?" She said, "A column on what?" By then I was noticing Suzi's caramel brown eyes and all I could say was, "Huh?" Fortunately, Suzi is the most supremely competent woman you can imagine. She developed an idea for a column that would explore, at its center, our relationship with time, and how we use the time of our lives to live fully—or not. Suzi's column, It's About Time, is my favorite.

The rest of the 2003 Anti-Socials only happened because all the people at Writers Monthly quietly took on the work of organizing the events, which freed me to drink beer and wine and practice posing as a writer. The Anti-Social Events included a reading by one of the best novelists in San Diego, Patricia Santana; a panel discussion by the mystery writers Carolyn Wheat, Alan Russell and Taffy Canyon; a rabble-rousing brain-expanding balloon-inflating session of creativity coaching with Jill Badonsky; and the wickedly honest, idiosyncratic and inspiring conversation of filmmaker Michael Steven Gregory as he introduced and screened his film, We The Writer.

Finally, on October 24^th, Writers Monthly hosted the climactic Take Back Your Time Day Happy Hour, with nationally recognized author Joe Robinson, the founder of Work to Live, making the scene, and the band Rick Shaw Monkey providing the sweet vibes. It was the first time Writers Monthly ever did anything socially responsible. It felt good. Especially since we included a keg of beer and many cases of wine.

So that's how it all happened in the first two years of publishing Writers Monthly. That's how we got here. Wherever here is.

Yet, I can't help but wonder, how is all of this in accordance with The Absolute Supreme Law? (I.e., Everything is About Me.)

Maybe this is the connection:

When I got involved with Writers Monthly I didn't especially like writers and I especially disliked poets.

Two years later, I like writers. I've even gone so far as to buy a few drinks for a few of the more civilized poets I've met.

I place the blame for this transformation on all the people mentioned above.

It's all their fault.

They've changed me, made me come to believe that without writers and poets in my life I would be even more lost and alone in this world.

Maybe all of us would be.

davidboyne
editor

New writers. New stories. New every month.

Coming at the world from the heart of San Diego, California, Writers Monthly is a community of deadbeat writers and brilliant readers and drunken artists. (They all have day jobs, too, so no worry. They're getting enough to eat.)

In our time of corporate television, conglomeration, and Machine Manufactured Mass Media, it is a subversive act to write, or to read, or to think.

We encourage you to join us in doing all three.

Make of us... what you will.

Okay, okay. Maybe that wasn't exciting enough, eh? Not revealing enough, eh? Try this:

writersmonthly.com is dedicated to writing, publishing and disseminating stories, ideas and questions to anyone who will read them. Until someone stops us.

We focus on Southern California's writers, but a writer who tells a good story and makes us wonder is going to get published by us no matter where they live.

It is a fact of our times that a small number of media conglomerates control most of the publishing in this country and around the planet. In America today, six publishing houses control 80% of the market.

We think that sucks.

We want to tell stories you won't find in the megalomaniacal monolithic media. (Gosh it's fun to talk tough!)

Our goal is to provide a forum for writers. And for readers.

Oh, we'd also like to have fun.

And, if by doing what we enjoy and creating something of value we happen to meet good looking, intriguing people who think we're cool and want to buy drinks for us, pay off our student loans or engage in sexual congress with us?

Well, that's all right, too.

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