Story Zine & Hybrid Zine

Making the story zine was lovely. 8 people took part.
The ugliest breakfast in the world was made on my campstove. Phipps was looking after a friend's dog, which did a poo.
And inspired by some trashy hire-books from the Grainger Market we produced some rather racy page-long works.
Here's excerpts (we mostly chose to be 'anon' so I'll just number them).

See if you can work out which room each takes place in. The title of the zine became 'It happened in the star & shadow':

1 "Other than the omnipresent computers, the symbol of working life, there's the sort of multicoloured mess that you'll find produced by artists."

2. "lunges forward, lips targeting lips, face for face. The man swerves and puts his mouth to Barney's ear. 'Brains' he whispers. 'Brains. Brains.'

3. "Between her legs, there glittered, like a finely-polished sheriff's badge, the little brass plaque bearing her seat number. Well, if it wasn't number 15, too!"

4. "He started to rise, bloody stripes over his face, but then, unseen above him, and with a slow-motion tilt, a small black box marked with stickers and the name 'lomo 33STS', fell silently down."

5. "I wake to the sound of crying and I see her. A woman sitting looking at the floor, handkerchief pressed to her face."

6. "His soft lips traced the outline of her jaw forcing out a gasp of pleasure as they neared the soft skin behind her ear."

7. "A substance emerged, globular, from the small machine, flowing out, massively encompassing the space, filling every corner, squashy with soft form."

8. "Mac brushed his creviced hands over the dark plastic levers remembering a time they had touched the softer and yielding folds of a willing woman"

9. "It helped him straighten his back, take a deep breath, clean his face up and start walking, his face now stony and held in place, stiff. Quick out the door and no-one would notice."

1. Office.
2. Projection Room.
3. Cinema.
4. Office.
5. The wallpapered room opposite the darkroom.
6. Bar.
7. Foyer.
8. Box office.
9. Corridor between cinema and office.

Genres covered include Western, Erotic Fantasy, Sci-fi Porn and Zombie Romance.

It was such a fun thing to do that I can't wait to do something similar again. So as Anna gathers some girls round to make a Mills n Boon romance, I have booked a saturday slot in the Star & Shadow in January to make

hybrids:

this time we will turn up not with pens and keyboards, but with glue and scissors, to cut up some cinema programmes and mix the words up with a page from our favourite novel/yellow pages/rent demand/council report. See what nonsensical poetry we can create, what hybrids can be found by the intermixing of everyday text. All welcome, free, purposeless and fun.

Story Zine Writing this Saturday

Dear all,

One of the many low-key creative things that happen at the Star & Shadow cinema is taking place on Saturday, from 10.30am onwards for 2 hours or so. If you are free, please come and join in - all are welcome, it's free and there's no need to be an expert!

At 10.30 we will share a wee breakfast & coffee in the office (bring anything you want!), flick through some trashy paperbacks - a western, a crime thriller, a mills'n'boon lovestory etc.. - and decide who wants to go where.

Then we will split up, with a notepad and pen (or laptop or typewriter) each, and try and write a very short (300 words?) story. This could be a fragment of a zombie horror, a gangster shoot-out, an existential monologue or an erotic fantasty - absolutely anything you fancy! The aim is to include some particular architectural or recognisable feature of the building (& its environs) in your story - the snake above the bar, the cinema seats or the darkroom equipment - whatever! Together we will cover some odd nooks and crannies of this rather unusual building, & maybe help people see them in a whole new light!

We'll meet up again after an hour or so and share ideas, writings & any problems. Then a chance to finish off or even write a second mini-story before we collect up the writings and check they're readable. By 2pm I intend to be at a photocopier printing out 100 copies of our stories as a zine that can then be left in the zine box and given out to cinema-goers for free.

And that's it! Absolutely anybody welcome!
But remember - we only have 26 letters to choose from.

(do bear in mind that the Rimini boys will be cleaning the cinema and setting things up ready for the evening, so we will have try our best not to hinder them. I might even ask us to wear 'writer' badges or something so they know who we are!)

Mike

http://zine-it-yourself.blogspot.com

p.s. if anyone fancies a more active alternative way of looking at the toon, the CCTV treasure hunt is starting at 11am at the City library.