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Diane Walton and On Spec: The Canadian Magazine of the Fantastic
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In this episode of Re-Creative, Mark and Joe talk to Diane Walton, a founding member and long-time managing editor of On Spec: The Canadian magazine of the Fantastic. On Spec is well known in Canadian speculative fiction circles (and beyond!) for publishing quality fiction and art from (largely but not exclusively) Canadian writers and artists.
Diane tells the lads how the highly regarded Canadian spec fic magazine began in Edmonton around 1989 after a creative writing group at the University of Alberta grew frustrated with American magazines rejecting their work for being “too Canadian”. She recounts the early days of assembling an editorial team, securing startup funds, and commissioning stories from notable authors like Dave Duncan and Eileen Kernaghan for their first saddle-stitched issue.
Re-Creative is produced by Donovan Street Press Inc. in association with MonkeyJoy Press.
Contact us at contact@donovanstreetpress.com
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Transcript
Greetings and Nicknames
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello, Mark. Hello, Smokin' Joe. Smokin' Joe, c'est moi. ah That's a good nickname. I like it. One of many. Oh, do you have other nicknames? Oh, God, I've been called so many things over the years. Okay, I've already forgotten them.
00:00:24
Speaker
Did I ask that before? um I don't know. We've now done so many of these episodes that that we could well be repeating ourselves. let there's Angry listeners screaming at their... they right up Mark, you're an idiot. eve though That wasn't actually the question I was going to ask, actually. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Nostalgia for Writing Tools
00:00:44
Speaker
So, I mean, people call me Giuseppe, Joseph, blah, blah, blah. But what's the real question? The real question. Okay. So this is, this could be just an answer. Yes, no a answer. It's fine. Do you have a writing implement that you especially love?
00:00:57
Speaker
Could be a pen, could be a typewriter, could be a, you know, Gee. I don't know. just Always such hard questions. Is that a hard question? I don't think it would be. Okay. Writing implement. I thought this would be a good one for our guests too. so I guess the writing implement that I probably have loved the most, I haven't actually used or seen in decades because it was the typewriter that my parents got back when i was like 11 or 12.
00:01:24
Speaker
And I can still smell that typewriter. Yeah. Yeah, I loved typing on it. and Most of the short stories in my short story collection, Other Times and Places, were written on that that typewriter. But it it vanished at some point.
00:01:40
Speaker
so yeah What about you? ah i had a typewriter too when I was a kid. My dad's typewriter, an old Corona. It was electric and it was just the loudest thing ever. so i was always banished to this room in the basement that had doors that could be closed. Because that's right that's where I tapped out my first novel ever when I was 16 or 17.
00:01:59
Speaker
So that was it. But yeah, it disappeared too. I don't know what happened to it. We'll have to hear more about that that novel at some point. Oh, no, no. We shall not discuss it. It's one that is, yeah, we'll just let that one sit in the, wherever the dust is, wherever it is. Yeah.
00:02:17
Speaker
All right.
Diane's Fountain Pen and Dictation Tech
00:02:18
Speaker
Now, I suppose you want to ask our guests the same. I would like to ask our guests the same question. Yes. Diane, welcome. Yeah. Diane Walton. Welcome to our podcast. We creative. Yeah. So have you had some kind of implement that was a favorite, like a pen or something or pencil, maybe a red pen. I don't know. These days, my favorite writing implement is a yeah refillable fountain pen.
00:02:40
Speaker
Yeah, nice. I bought it about five years ago. and And guys, I mean, I was getting tired of buying cartridges and having to replace them all the time. And then this one came with it with a special reservoir that you could just attach and then dip into your bottle of ink and refill it.
00:02:56
Speaker
And so I've been doing that. I have this really nice bottle of black ink and it refills and it's got a lovely nib. So nice I like writing with it. it's It's comfortable and it just suits me.
00:03:08
Speaker
Now, do you compose by writing by hand or do you use the keyboard? I just dot scribbly notes all over desk. and they'll have Okay, I've got a follow-up question. Have either of you experimented with not – so I keyboard. i i you know I compose at the keyboard and I imagine both of you do as well. Have you experimented with the dictating?
00:03:32
Speaker
The technology is getting quite a bit better. um'm i've meant to, especially when I was having some some w risk problems a while back. But then the risk problems kind of cleared up and I'm like, oh, I guess I don't have to. But I was super curious to see how that would work.
00:03:48
Speaker
What about you, Diane? ah No, not not in the slightest. The last time I dictated to anybody was probably 1982.
OnSpec Magazine's Origins
00:03:58
Speaker
two give or take when i actually did have a job where i had my own stenographer wow took everything in short short hand and i would dictate letters to her but no wow that's the last time that is a blaster in the past there's kids listening that don't understand any of those half the words you just used there exactly Okay, I want to actually hear more about but this stenographer. But first, I'm going to explain to our guests who you are. a good idea. Anybody who may not know.
00:04:28
Speaker
so So Diane Walton, one of the founding members of the magazine OnSpec, the Canadian magazine of the fantastic, which began, i believe, back in about 1989.
00:04:39
Speaker
And you've always been a driving force for the magazine. And as the world has recently learned, the magazine is kind of coming to an end at least under um its original team and under you.
00:04:52
Speaker
And if it does continue, and we'll talk about that, we'll be in a rather different form. So is there anything you would add to that introduction? Well, other than the fact that the original team hasn't been the original team for a very long time. Although although Barry Hammond, who was our poetry ah editor right from the beginning, he only retired about a year and a half ago.
00:05:13
Speaker
So he was with us right up until that time. and But other than that, I'm the only on-spec person who's been there since the beginning. All the way through. And is that correct? 89? That was the beginning?
00:05:26
Speaker
Pretty much. 88, 89. about it for quite a while, but then we finally got the first issue at the time. And when everything was ready, all the stars had to be aligned. And and so it worked out.
00:05:38
Speaker
Regular listeners to this podcast know that we often have our guests pick a particular piece of art. In this case, the art is going to be the magazine on spec. But first, and we're going to get to that. But first, I want to know, why did you have a stenographer?
00:05:54
Speaker
um um i was At the time, i was working for the government. And i was in what they called the correspondence unit for the Department of Motor Vehicles.
00:06:05
Speaker
And the job didn't last very long. i was I was pretty crappy at it, so I didn't stay. but ah But no, that like, and so when somebody wrote a letter to motor vehicles asking a question about their license or, you know, whatever the case may be, we had to respond.
00:06:22
Speaker
because that was the deal. Like you they never, you know, the letters didn't go into a vacuum. They always got an answer. And so we either responded with like a, not really a form letter as much, but it was basically, we would pick and choose phrases from a menu that would fit.
00:06:38
Speaker
And then sometimes um if the the their ah problem or their situation was so unique, we could actually dictate a letter and say, okay, dear sir madam, et cetera, et cetera. this is what I think you should do. And then that's what the stenographer was for. Yeah. because Okay, Mark. Because didn't have computers, right? Right. We had to go type the darn letter.
00:06:59
Speaker
ah So Mark, help me gracefully pivot to on spec now from that. Yeah.
00:07:07
Speaker
Well, I guess on s spec started an age when they're still worse stenographers. You know, that was that was a while ago, 89. So people could have still been doing that as a job, though. Probably. Yeah.
00:07:18
Speaker
Yeah. i always I always wished as a journalist that I'd actually picked up shorthand because it would have been so much easier than trying to figure out what I was trying to say in my notes later.
00:07:29
Speaker
My scribbly scribble. Does anybody know shorthand anymore? I bet they do. I bet some people do. I'm sure some people who learned it way back when probably still remember it as to whether they're teaching it anywhere. I have no idea. Oh, I seriously doubt that. but As I said, the technology is getting significantly better. So, you know, you could upload the audio from this podcast and turn it into a transcript that's pretty clean now. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So on SPAC, probably you've told this story umpteen times before. Would you mind telling us again, how did it begin?
00:08:04
Speaker
ah began with a small group of people who had taken a creative writing course at the U of a University of Alberta, and it was taught by Rudy Wiebe.
00:08:16
Speaker
I wasn't in that group. i i laid I sort of joined later on, but ah what had happened was that they would get together for their classes and they would critique each other's work. And then after the course was finished, they thought, well, we like each other.
00:08:30
Speaker
Why don't we stick together and actually keep meeting as a as a writing circle? And which is, you know, the way a lot of people get started, right, with creative writing groups. And so they would get together and work on each other's stories and and help each other. And then somewhere along the way, I picked up, I i joined them. ah It was kind of bizarre because...
00:08:51
Speaker
ah Rick and I, my husband and I lived an hour out of out of the city and he was at university taking geophysics, but he had to do long, long hours at nighttime in the computer lab.
00:09:03
Speaker
And so I had no place to go, right? I could either sit at the university and wait for him because we only had one car or i could, you know, walk the streets. I mean, you know, it just worked out. So I basically, we were very good friends with Marianne Nielsen, who was one of the people in this writing group. So I started staying at her place and have supper there. And then I'd just hang out for the evening while where I was waiting for Rick to come and get me. So on the writing group nights,
00:09:28
Speaker
We thought, well, I might as well join the writing group since i I was also trying to do some writing at the time. And so anyway that's a long story. But sooner or later, i think Marianne kind of rubbed off on some of the other people who were not writing science fiction.
00:09:44
Speaker
But it kind of drifted into that. Like they were, you know sort of writing science fiction and fantasy adjacent stories. And and and sometimes, you know, and and then they would submit, you know, send off to Asimov's or the magazine of fantasy and science fiction,
First Issue and Editorial Strategy
00:10:01
Speaker
somebody in the States, right?
00:10:03
Speaker
And they'd get these really, really nice rejection letters. And the rejection letter from the editor would be something like, well, this is really good, but nobody's going to get it Our readers just just, it's not our style. Our our readers can't can't get it. It's it's too Canadian.
00:10:21
Speaker
it's Wow. yeah Too alien. Too alien. so So, you know, we were getting frustrated. And and one evening, while we were sitting around bitching at each other, essentially, about this kind of a problem, somebody said, well, you know, there's got to be a Canadian magazine.
00:10:38
Speaker
And we looked at each other and went, well, no, there isn't. And there might have been one that started and and didn't stick around. You know, just there isn't right now. And so somebody else, whoever they were, I can't remember, said, well, why don't we start one?
00:10:55
Speaker
And this was in Edmonton, which is not the center of the universe. ah Nobody said we couldn't do it. And we started sort of checking off all the boxes, right? Okay, we we're all editors, we know what we're doing, know what we're talking about.
00:11:11
Speaker
Marianne and I were very much connected with the Canadian science fiction community, if you will, at the time. We'd gone to so conventions, we'd met writers, we knew who was out there who was actually doing doing the writing.
00:11:23
Speaker
And we knew where the audience was. So we had us, we had Gina Snyder who had her own computer at home and she was doing newsletters and desktop publishing for a living. She was working from home.
00:11:39
Speaker
And so we knew that she could do the layout. She could do the magazine. We had Tim Hamill who was living in Edmonton at the time, who's a fabulous science fiction artist who could A, do our first cover and B, be our art director going forward.
00:11:55
Speaker
We had Barry, Barry Hammond, who was a poet and who could do our poetry editing. You know, we had all all of the pieces were coming together. Yeah. and And then we managed to to get some some gifts of of money to get us started.
00:12:08
Speaker
So we had to print the darn thing and pay the writers because we were always the you writers. That was it. You're never going to not pay your writers. And so the first thing we did through the grapevine and through a lot of letters and phone calls was to ask people,
00:12:23
Speaker
that we knew in the community. Can you send us something? And lo and behold, we get all of these stories. Hang on. I'm going to grab my copies of the magazine or what I was looking for here.
00:12:37
Speaker
I'm glad this is not on video. i'm Okay. And our first issue, which is a really pretty cover, which I'll show you guys anyhow. Okay. Was by Tim Hamill.
00:12:50
Speaker
See it? Yeah. Yeah. It's wraparound cover. Nice. So we see, can you describe it for those who... um It's essentially masks, a series of of different types of very alien-looking masks. There's kind of ah a lizard creature. There's a human humanoid ah with eyes, nose, and no mouse.
00:13:13
Speaker
ah Kind of looks very vampire-ish, actually. There's kind of a dinosaur-y type face or a demon-type face. There's a robot-type face. and And then just a couple of other really cool star-type creatures.
00:13:26
Speaker
So Tim did this. And it's all what they called, I think, saddle-stitched at the time. So it's basically not like there's no binding on the back. It's just put it together in staple in the middle. But we got a story from Dave Duncan. Ah, OK. Yeah. H.A. Hargreaves. I don't know if if you ever heard of of Hank Hargreaves. I certainly have. I've got a collection of his stories here. Well, there you go. Okay, so you know what his his claim to fame was, right? And he was a professor at the U of A, and we knew him.
00:14:00
Speaker
So we asked him for a story. We got a story from Eileen Kernaghan, who's a writer out on the West Coast. Robert Runte sent us a story. Rhea Rose, who has been writing for a long time, again on the West Coast. Lyle Weiss, who became a very, very good friend.
00:14:19
Speaker
a fellow at the time named Ron Stewart. I've lost track, lost touch with Ron for a long time, but, but he was a friend of ours. ah Another Edmonton area writer, Alberta writer named Catherine Sinclair.
00:14:30
Speaker
So they all send us these absolutely fabulous stories. And so we published our first issue and got some illustration for the stories. Let's see. you know What was this?
00:14:42
Speaker
ah like Adrian Kleinberg. and Okay, Hargraves wrote us a beautiful story about playing golf on the moon. and So Adrian did an illustration, which is basically a ginormous golf ball with a picture of an astronaut on the moon landscape. scheme Oh, nice. Yeah. Yeah, it's good. so Mark has a story set in the moon, but I don't think there was any golf in it. Was there, Mark? No, there's no golf. Yeah.
00:15:09
Speaker
And ah so, yeah, so so we put it together and what we started off with, because we were feeling kind of green at this and we thought, okay, do we do we have the credibility?
00:15:22
Speaker
Us, our a little group, do we have the credibility? na Maybe we should get some real names in here. So we asked a number of people to be our first editorial advisory board, which would be the likes of Monica Hughes,
00:15:36
Speaker
and Pauline Gedge, Doug Barber, Candace Jane Dorsey, and Jay Brian Clark was our first editorial advisory board. And did that make a difference? Not so much, no. They validated what we were doing. Yeah, okay. But it was good for the ego, right? yeah it it It gave the magazine a bit more, in some ways, at the beginning, credibility. Yeah. Until we really had got our chops and knew was going on. but
00:16:07
Speaker
So essentially, we would pick all the stories. And then the last thing we would do is we would give them to these folks to read. And they would kind of, you know, you did well. Okay, pat you on the head. And, you know, that's it. And you're good. So nobody ever said, no, that's crap.
00:16:23
Speaker
ah you know you would You know, over my dead body, you're not going to publish that story. Nothing like that. No, they just they just said, yeah. you know Yeah. Well, I mean, it became such a good-looking magazine and a well-edited magazine.
00:16:35
Speaker
magazine that I remember seeing it in my university days, you know, in stores. And I certainly didn't care whether or not there was an advisory board behind it or anything. Most people wouldn't have, you know, but it made us feel good.
00:16:49
Speaker
um Yeah. I knew, I i just knew i I wanted to be ah in it but I only ever managed to submit like a couple of times and and I got rejected. And I actually have I looked through my files. Joe, don't feel so bad. Yeah. Well, I looked through my files and I have two
Rejection Letters and Personal Connections
00:17:06
Speaker
rejection letters from you, Diane. know And you're still talking to me? Okay. Well, they were know they were very well they were personal, which I think is is not common. So you wrote me, I mean, there was the the form rejection letter and then
00:17:23
Speaker
you you wrote some stuff, which was really um appreciated. Did you have that form rejection letter with like a bunch of boxes and then? For a while, yeah. Yeah, okay. And then people told us that it was very insulting. So we decided. Well, I don't know. It's better than no feedback at all. i mean, yeah a lot of the time as a writer, you just you're sending stuff off into a black hole, basically. If you hear back at all, you don't really hear anything. so We've had good and bad responses. Yes. Yeah. um Like the the rule is that you really should never, ever write back to the magazine that rejected you. Oh, no. Yeah. No, of course not. No. You should never do And yet we we got the odd complaint, you know, like this one guy who shall remain nameless wrote and told us we were a bunch of morons for rejecting his beautiful work and that we were holding back science fiction by 20 years. Yeah.
00:18:18
Speaker
Well, you know what? Writers have to be confident. so Oh, brother. yes yeah Maybe it can be too confident. And and then he he threatened to self-publish the story. And for about a year after that, I kept checking and just to see, and he never showed up anywhere. So it it was just you know one of those things. But it's a live and learn situation, right? Whether he ever became or sold any of his work anywhere, I had no idea.
00:18:46
Speaker
Well, okay. So Mark and I are the only two um writers in Canada not to have been published in on spec. I got a real kick out of it. Establish that now. Yes. Yes. When when it was announced that that the magazine was not continuing in its current form, of course, everybody came out of the woodwork and and said, well, I was, you know, I had an editorial, had a poem, I had a story, whatnot.
00:19:07
Speaker
And I'm like, well, I've got a rejection letter, but I'm just honored to have um the longstanding editor and one of the co-founders on our podcast. So I think that counts for something.
00:19:19
Speaker
Sure, it does. Yeah. So you had later, we'll probably meet in person and and you hopefully have dinner at Gary and Wendy's place or something. I don't know. Well, yeah, actually, we should mention, yeah, a good friend of mine, Gary Swindon, who I worked with at the CBC.
00:19:35
Speaker
is your He's my cousin. He's your cousin. Yes, right. Yeah. And we often see Gary and his wife, Wendy. Okay, wait a minute. Guys, we got to stop this. Our non-Canadian listeners are just going to take the wrong idea from this. Yeah, everyone in Canada knows one another. or They're related. Okay. It's a small country. it's It's not that small a country, people. If if truth be known, I mean, i'm I'm an only child, right? I grew up with no siblings. And so Gary and his three brothers are basically the closest to brothers that I've ever had.
00:20:10
Speaker
And so I figured that. And Wendy's my sister. Well, great people. Yeah. Yeah. and And I did meet you actually long before I knew that connection. um We actually sat at a table together. You probably don't remember. yeah At a convention, we manned an SF Canada table together for a while. at I can't even remember what convention it was. Yeah.
00:20:33
Speaker
Yeah. But I knew you were a nice person then, and I knew there was a... So when it came time to invite you to our podcast, I knew that. So I have a question about starting a magazine. when so when you did, it was an interesting time to start a magazine. You mentioned that you had one of the people had access to layout software.
Impact of Electronic Submissions
00:20:51
Speaker
And so that that was a time period when like the do-it-yourself thing was much more possible to do because of that. So what happened once... Once the internet came around, did that make your life even easier or harder?
00:21:06
Speaker
It was a long time before we stopped asking for print stories. Right. For a number of years, we'd basically pick up the mail, pick up the manuscripts,
00:21:20
Speaker
open them up, record them and and do everything you know manually and and then distribute them amongst the editors so that everybody got to read the manuscript. And so you know everybody reads batch one, which is 10 stories, hands it off to the next person, the next person, the next person, and so forth.
00:21:37
Speaker
Sometime along the way, we realized that other magazines were taking submissions through email electronically. And I was talked into this. I won't say by whom. But to say, yeah, okay, we have to open to electronic submissions.
00:21:59
Speaker
We got 800 stories. Oh, wow. Compared to what you would normally get, what would you normally get? 30 month. Oh my God. oh my God. That's, I imagine what what's happening to editors right now with ai Yeah. Getting all this slop. Yeah. yeah and And not only that, it was coming from all over the world, right? Yeah, of course. And and so we finally figured out that we could organize or you know, restrict the numbers that were coming in, or at least the the timelines.
00:22:29
Speaker
So we would say, hey, we're only open from here to here. right sure This is it. This is all you get. And then that kind of controlled things a little bit better. And then we found the software and or the applications, the ah plugins that we could we could use to keep track of the stories and and do all of that. This has been a a long time coming, like over the years. But I found this really cool WordPress plugin.
00:22:53
Speaker
to help me to to just sort things out and be able to assign stories to the editors to read and find out what their status was and have pre-written rejection letters and pre-written acceptance letters and all of this stuff already computerized. So that made life a lot easier.
00:23:10
Speaker
But the first the first time around, it was just terrifying. Yeah, it's funny. I wasn't even thinking about that. I was just thinking about how much how much more you could do in terms of ah reaching an audience, having the internet available to you. i just I was thinking of the marketing side of it. That never really happened, eh? That never really happened. I mean, oh even even even now, I think more people go to our website because they're looking for a market. They're looking for something to read.
00:23:38
Speaker
and And I think that was probably the the the big thing. drawback. I think that's why I could never quit my day job. You know, we just never had that many people subscribing, that many people reading. The people who read it enjoyed it. They talked about it. They spread the word in their own little ah circles.
00:23:56
Speaker
But it wasn't as as huge an audience as you would think. I mean, even now, since we we joined bluece i joined Blue Sky last year, and we suddenly had something like 3,000 followers on Blue Sky.
00:24:12
Speaker
How many of those people have ever bought a copy? Maybe a handful. Right. Yeah. yeah yeah so That must be the case with a lot of magazines that people are looking for a market as opposed to something to read. That's wow.
00:24:27
Speaker
Yeah. you know and And others do do it their own way. you know like Sometimes if they offer the magazine for free, they'll get a lot of downloads. They'll get a lot of readers. And, but we've always charged for it.
00:24:39
Speaker
And so, so yeah yeah, I mean, you do what you have to, but it's different for everybody. And and everybody has a different marketing strategy. And it got to the point where where I was just too tired to really come up with anything new and wonderful. You know, the old way is the best way as far as we were concerned. And it kind of, you know, you you you you market by word of mouth. You meet people at conventions face to face.
00:25:05
Speaker
And that's how we made a lot of our sales. But I think it was extremely well known, wasn't it? And it was carried in and in a lot of stores. I remember seeing it on shelves. I got an email today saying, I've lived in Victoria for 20 years and I've never heard of you.
00:25:20
Speaker
like Really? yeah Today? Yeah. Huh. You know, but whose fault is that? You know, it's nobody's fault in a way. Like he obviously didn't.
00:25:33
Speaker
google canadian science fiction magazines at any time in his life yeah so yeah things that comes up and and we didn't actually have the money to put an ad in the victoria area media you know like so so it's it's just you know you don't know what uh what media these people are expecting you to show up on like where you know like ah in fact a guy came up to me at a van toes years ago but He said, I've never heard of you.
00:26:04
Speaker
And I said, where would you expect to have heard of us? And he looked at me blankly like, oh, I didn't get that part. ah You know, because that's the thing. Where would you where would you expect to hear about this tiny little Edmonton magazine, except when they close after 35 years? And then suddenly everybody talks about it.
00:26:25
Speaker
I just, I find it very surprising because it may be Mark and I are unique, but, and I'm sure you did the same Mark, that we kind of made it our business to find out what was out there. You know, like I know yeah people don't several of the, like a Neoopsis magazine, Challenging Destiny, Horizons of f SF, all these. yeah harak yeah there's Yeah. A lot of people wait to be spoon fed.
00:26:51
Speaker
It's just the way it happens. you they In fact, I was really mean, um the fellow that that wrote and said, I'd never heard of you and I live in Victoria. I simply, I asked him, have you ever heard of Medinoopsis?
00:27:06
Speaker
So I don't know whether he's going to reply or not. He might be too embarrassed. But you know again, they probably do a lot of their local local promotion. I don't know. I don't follow it that much. yeah um Everybody has their own way of doing things.
00:27:20
Speaker
Now, okay, so it it lasted and an awful long time, really. To what do you attribute its longevity? Like, how were you guys able to keep it going?
Funding and Sustainability
00:27:30
Speaker
um Money.
00:27:32
Speaker
the The Alberta ah Cultural Industries branch, the Alberta Foundation of the Arts yeah Cultural Industries, has pretty much always been very good at providing money for local cultural products.
00:27:49
Speaker
Theater, dance, art, publishing. The book publishing industry in Alberta thrives, the magazine publishing industry in Alberta thrives. And for the longest time, we were pretty much the only speculative fiction magazine yeah that was applying for grants. Right. So you're kind of in your own little niche. Yeah. So they pretty much always ah provided us with sufficient funding that we knew that we could pay our writers and pay the printer.
00:28:19
Speaker
Right. and And get the copies out. And so that was ah big ah big thing for us because we couldn't charge our readers the real cost of the magazine, physical publication. Because like you print 500 copies, you maybe sell half of them.
00:28:37
Speaker
You know, I mean, maybe a bit more than half, if you're lucky. So the rest of them are just just in boxes in my house. You know, I'm surrounded by old back issues of OnSpec. the ones that aren't here are at um our the comic book store in Edmonton, where we keep a lot of our inventory.
00:28:55
Speaker
You know, you don't sell every single thing you print. So you you can't make up that money. So the funding from the government to subsidize the arts in Canada was an essential thing.
00:29:06
Speaker
Yeah, that must be just challenging to have copies sitting around. I've got, I mean, I think my first novel, I bought two boxes from a publisher because it was expensive to get across the border. I had an American publisher for my first novel. And I think I finally now sold them all.
00:29:24
Speaker
But that's like 20 years. okay, fair enough. yeah thing I mean, we've we've unloaded, you know, free copies like ah to to conventions like the... yeah CanCon in Ottawa last year, i I gave them, sent them a ah box of copies that they could give to everybody that came to CanCon for free. you Things like that. So I told Brandon at the comic book store in Edmonton, I said, look, just give away the copies of OnSpec that you have and tell people that they can donate to the local cat rescue.
00:29:54
Speaker
Yeah. and And that's probably what I'm going to do with the copies I have here. you know just Just to make sure that the money – somebody is reading them and the money is going someplace good. It goes somewhere good. We're still selling. We're still selling digital copies online.
00:30:08
Speaker
Those will always be available. And Waitlist Books has, oh gosh, about 15 years worth, I think, if not more. Possibly even 20 years worth. Well, that's – okay. So that's a great time to ask you some the – what I'm interested in a little bit is like so what are some of the stories that you've published that you're just most proud of publishing?
Memorable Stories and Canadian Fiction
00:30:29
Speaker
I mean, I know that's a really hard question to ask an editor. Oh, I made a list. but But you've got to have a few that's just like, you know what? i don't I don't think anyone else would have published that. And it's such an amazing story that you're proud of it.
00:30:40
Speaker
um You guys know the writer James Allen Gardner? Yes. Yes. Yes. I love his work. yeah All right. it wasn't I'm sure it wasn't his first story, but he sent us a story early years of publishing. Yeah.
00:30:55
Speaker
And I wanted it desperately. The other editors were kind of lukewarm on it. And a few years later, like he won the Aurora Award for the story, thing. I met him at a convention, and he told me at that point in time that the story had probably made him more money in reprints than most of his novels that he had published ah up to that date. Wow. You know, so just one little story, but stories stories have legs, right? They they they can keep going.
00:31:28
Speaker
The title of the story almost was what sold it to me in the first place. It's called Muffin Explains Teleology to the World at Large. Oh, yes. Okay. Teleology, definition-wise, is the explanation of something by referring to its purpose, goal, or end.
00:31:47
Speaker
And the concept of teleology in this particular story was that there's this little girl, six-year-old girl named Muffin, a very precocious child, who knows when the world is going to end.
00:31:58
Speaker
Yeah. And it's not one of those huge huge apocalyptic things. She says, it's just going to come to a stop because we've gotten to where we need to be.
00:32:09
Speaker
And that's how the story comes to an end, right? Except that In her case, it starts up again because she and her brother are the only ones that are still surviving at the end of it. And I think they're eating bologna sandwiches or something at the end. I can't remember. let's but Maybe peanut butter. But no, and and I mean, she she's an adorable child. She doesn't talk like a like a ah you know a two foot high adult. She she talks like a kid.
00:32:36
Speaker
Right. And all of the stories leading up to is is the fact that she has said, look, you know, things are going to stop like Thursday. and And her mother, of course, says, oh, that's nice, dear. You know, that's nice, dear. The only person that actually believes her is her uncle.
00:32:53
Speaker
And he just says, i think you know what you're doing. like You're a smart child. And I think you you really know what's happening here. and And there's this beautiful scene where she's telling her uncle where she thinks he should be.
00:33:06
Speaker
at the last minute. And it's like, you know, she says something like, you should be walking on a beach somewhere. Just enjoy the waves and enjoy everything around you. And he says, okay, that's what I'm going to do. And I was in tears for some reason. I went, oh, geez. Wow. And, but it's a beautiful story and it's so peaceful and so happy and so funny in places.
00:33:29
Speaker
that, you know, it's it's always stuck with me. And, you know, like I said, he's reprinted the story a number of times. I wonder if that inspired Don McKellar. ah Last night, I think was the name of the movie.
00:33:43
Speaker
Yeah, I never saw that. Yeah. so Because it had that kind of beautiful sense of the ending. Yeah, it was people were just trying to figure out where they want to be when it all it all ends quietly. Yeah. Is that what you is that kind of what you're talking about when you're It's alien to the, to an American audience. Is that the kind of story that maybe just wouldn't go over? Perhaps. With an American magazine? just In those days, like with, with, especially with, with analog and, and, you know, the hard science fiction magazines and stuff, they were looking for hero saves the day stories.
00:34:17
Speaker
right they They were looking and, then Harlan Ellison came along and kind of blew everything out of the water, right? But it was there was a time when when, you know, those kinds of stories weren't quite ready to meet the audience yet. And and so, and we were a little bit ahead of the curve in some some cases, I think.
00:34:35
Speaker
But, you know, like, I mean, there was a story later on called Carpe Diem. Again, I think it was, it might've been Eileen Kernahan. I can't remember the writer now, that's sad. But ah it was about a bunch of of people in a senior's home And it was in a situation where you could tell that the society had devolved or sort a certain point where you were confined to this senior's home and you were told you have to live right. You have to take care of yourself. You have to eat well. You have to follow all the rules because if you don't,
00:35:15
Speaker
we're probably going to have to have you taken care of. Like, ah nice euthanized. Goodness. and And one of the women essentially says, screw this.
00:35:26
Speaker
And she goes out bar hopping one night. It just has the best time in her life. And course, the next day the inevitable happens, but she's had that carpe diem moment.
00:35:38
Speaker
She lived the life and she left the way she wanted to. And that was the story. And and of course, how often, how many magazines at the time, and especially in the States, would have bought a story like that? I don't know.
00:35:49
Speaker
That's true. Actually, and there's interesting parallels so with that story with your novel, The Fatness, Mark. um Just ah throw that in there. um Robert Rente, who you referenced earlier, has spoken and and written about the difference between American fiction and Canadian fiction.
00:36:07
Speaker
And I think a part of it was what you said, that the Americans have to have a hero, but Canadian fiction doesn't really, doesn't have to save the day. Yeah, we had more antiheroes, I think. We had more doom and not so much doom and gloom, but let's face it, a lot of Canadian writing over the years has always been influenced by the dark and stormy winters. ah you know and And just that whole attitude, just the the way the way we are and what we're affected by.
00:36:34
Speaker
Wow. Do you think there there is that geographical component as opposed to just the the makeup of our... I think so, even if it's just metaphorical. You know, even if it the story didn't have to necessarily be set in the in the dead of winter and in the middle of the prairies, but, you know, it just sometimes it just feels that way.
00:36:52
Speaker
Did you guys ever have any long, knock-down, dry-goat arguments about what story should or should not be included? Frequently. Oh, really? Okay. The the joke with amongst the editors, okay, the the process that we used to do is we would get approximately 40 stories, right? And Kath Jackal, who was our our business manager at the time, would separate the stories into batches of 10. And then each editor would read the batch hand it off to the next editor, hand it off to the next, and so on and so forth. forth And we were all keeping our scores.
00:37:27
Speaker
The score was basically, if it was a one, it was, yes, I would take this story in a heartbeat and I will fight to the death for it, down to a five, which is over my dead body. You know, the three being meh.
00:37:43
Speaker
Oh, the worst place to be, a three. yeah Oh, yes. At least five, you've got some kind of emotion out of the reader. Yeah, The two was, yeah, this story's almost there, but maybe if they rewrite it, you know, like we can give them some suggestions and say, hey, rewrite no promises. So so that was our our way of doing things. So we would get together on a particular night with wine, had to be wine, um and have our fight night.
00:38:12
Speaker
And that's what we called it. A fight night. And we would go through, first we would go through all of the fives and the fours and go, okay, no, no, no, no. And then somebody would go, well, no, I kind of like that one. And then we'd have to come back and talk about it and talk about and then make a decision. If a person could fight enough for a particular story, even if the rest of us were going, yay, okay.
00:38:37
Speaker
it usually got bought because we knew that in a sampling of our reading audience, enough people in that reading audience sample would be that editor, would be that person. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. wow this yeah So, you know, and and and actually I think that's how Muffin got in the door too because the other editors at the time didn't think it was all that good. Really? Wow.
00:39:02
Speaker
Who knows, right? But and there were there were stories that I lost the fight on over the years that I would there was there was one story. I wish I could remember it now. But all I remember is that I was so unhappy that you know it just didn't get picked. and and And I couldn't fight hard enough for it. I mean, obviously, I should have. But it just didn't work that way. But then eventually there were other, as we mentioned, magazines in the Canadian landscape that um that perhaps those stories went on to. I know that the the stories that that you guys rejected of mine did eventually get published by the other magazines like Challenging Destiny, Horizons SF, and so on. And and it's essentially because our taste was different, right? Yeah.
00:39:47
Speaker
And it suited us, or it didn't suit us, it suited somebody else. And so there's there's never anything that says, well I mean, we we did reject some really bad stories, but you know presumably those things never saw the light of day anyhow. But we did get letters from writers saying, hey, you know you rejected my story, but you gave me some really good comments.
00:40:11
Speaker
And I used those comments and I rewrote it and I've sold it to so-and-so. And so it happens. yeah it happens Now, did you favor Canadian stories or did it matter where the stories came from? We desperately wanted to favor Canadian stories.
00:40:28
Speaker
Now, the problem with that is that when we opened up to the stories submitted through the net, we were starting to get some really fine stories from other countries. Right. And so that, you know, we kind of slipped at that point. So that that there were some times when we just weren't filling up as many Canadian stories as we should have in the particular issues. Did you have your own personal CanCon regulation where there had to be at least a certain... No, we had to be 80%. Yeah.
00:41:03
Speaker
yeah Well, I think you could argue that they're they're Canadian stories if they're being published in your magazine. I mean, you've got a specific sort of Canadian aesthetic, so... No, I had be Canadian authored.
00:41:14
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, can Canada Council... Well, that probably matters there, yeah. We were getting funding from them. We literally had to send them a copy of each of the issues of the magazines with with C for Canadian written on the pages.
00:41:31
Speaker
So you have a 10-page story. It got C, C, C, c see you know, 10 times. And then an American story yeah got F for foreign. And then, you know, and and the Canadian had to be 80% of the editorial content.
00:41:47
Speaker
And which was stupid was stupid in a way because we could publish like a thousand word story by a Canadian or a 5,000 word story by a Canadian or, you know, like that. I gave those the same weight, but by page count, it didn't.
00:42:07
Speaker
Oh, really? I was really careful about that. Hmm. yeah But they were that picky. I mean, it was the bean counters that were looking. Yeah, they yeah they are trying to promote yeah Canadian yeah yeah artists. So makes sense.
00:42:21
Speaker
It's a bit weird. Even then, when we bought the stories for a year's worth of issues, then we had to figure out pick and choose, you know, what goes into which issue. And and that's always been fun.
00:42:31
Speaker
let it decide And so what was that evening called? The bloodletting? yeah Almost. Now, okay. So you stuck with it the whole time. Was there ever a point at which you were tempted yourself to give it up or?
Retirement and Future Plans
00:42:47
Speaker
This year. yeah This was the first time? i basically, when we moved here from from Edmonton and I retired and I knew I had more time to work on it, I said, okay, I'll give it a year or two.
00:43:00
Speaker
yeah And I'd been telling myself for the last, you know, five or six years, I said, I'll stop when it's not fun anymore. and And this year, it just wasn't fun. You know, it it it it was leading up to that. And I thought, okay, I don't want to be, you know, going through the grind of applying for grants and doing all that stuff and then chasing after my editors to get something done and, you know, this, that, and the other thing. And and it just wasn't it wasn't an adventure for me like it was before.
00:43:28
Speaker
I enjoyed it, and but not as much. And so it wasn't that there was something that changed. It just had become. Well, I got old. you got No, no.
00:43:40
Speaker
Now that I've recently turned 60, I've decided nobody's allowed to call themselves old until they're 100. Okay. That's fair enough. then That gives me 20, 20, whatever. Okay. ah Yeah.
00:43:54
Speaker
I know. who's Somebody on Facebook was talking about their 96-year-old mother acting like a teenager or something. I thought, okay, that's what I'm going to do. and oh no yeah Yeah. And that's what I'm going to do in 25 years. You know, that's, it'll be like that. um Yeah.
00:44:10
Speaker
So it's not that you got old, but it got old. Yeah. So you see the other magazines around you and you think, look how much energy they have. Look how much just new stuff that they're doing. I mean, you know, like, like a pulp, pulp literature.
00:44:29
Speaker
Okay. they're They're publishing books. ah They're publishing the magazine. They're running, you know, running little convention events or, you know, online stuff. They're doing all these things. And Augur Magazine, the same thing. They're doing doing a convention, you know. And I just did not have the energy and there was nobody else on the team that wanted to take on these kinds of projects. Right. So why try and copy other people if they're doing it really, really well?
00:44:59
Speaker
We were just kind of, you know, same old, same old. And as much as the stories were still really good, you know, we didn't, we didn't, um you know, skimp on on that. Like we were very cautious about what we picked. But the the other stuff that we were doing, social media marketing and then that kind of thing, we we just couldn't But, okay, so it is ending in this form, but it appears that it has been taken up by Shadow Pop Press, Edward Willett, back on the other side of the country.
00:45:30
Speaker
And so tell us about that. What is happening there? what How is it going to live on? um Ed is going to do a Kickstarter campaign, ah essentially to be able to publish an anthology, a one-shot deal, um just to see how it how it plays out.
00:45:49
Speaker
and if he can A get the money and B get the stories and put the book together then see if it sells If everything, you know, ah like all the stars are aligned, then there would be another one. If not, we tried. You know, it's it's it's just, but he's using with our blessing because Onspec is actually owned, if you will, by by the Copper Pig Writers Society, which is a not-for-profit society in Alberta. That's always been the way we did this. And so the Copper Pig of which I am president for life, basically offered the name on spec.
00:46:30
Speaker
If it's enough to sell something, you know if if people will see that and go, oh yeah, you know there's something there that's still you know something that they remember or whatever the case may be, I don't know. yeah um And it gives it a name, it gives it ah a brand.
00:46:48
Speaker
That's good for him. yeah And I'll be probably reading slush and you know doing some of the helping out with the editing and that kind of thing. Oh, so you'll stay involved. So you're not out completely then. No, I won't be as tired as I was this year. I keep trying to get out and they keep pulling me back in. Well, yeah, you know yeah it it it'll be fun. That's the thing. it'll be It'll be fun again.
00:47:12
Speaker
Yeah. yeah it know Somebody else is paying the bills. Somebody else is managing the printing and the editing and the layout and all of that stuff that I don't have to worry about. But now you um did you you recently were awarded a, was it a lifetime achievement award? It's a Hall of Fame.
00:47:30
Speaker
Hall of Fame. Okay. Yeah. For your work, which is, I think everybody in the country that has anything to do with the industry and and any awareness of it would believe that this is extremely well-deserved.
00:47:44
Speaker
So congratulations. Yeah. king i was I was really tough. I was very happy. um like Barb Geller-Smith who's one of my editors she nominated me for it last year and then the committee basically you know they they had to weigh out all the different nominations that they had sitting on their desk and they picked some other people and then this year i was one of the the lucky people that got it so it was good timing in a way like it just made me feel good and I've got this lovely plaque on my lips yeah and sorry what organization was that I missed that that's the the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association okay good
00:48:19
Speaker
They do the Aurora Awards. Yeah. Yeah. yeah It must feel special to you, you know, to have contributed in this way to the Canadian science fiction of fantasy landscape. And yeah like, how do you feel about it?
00:48:32
Speaker
I like the idea. I mean, you know, it's an ego thing, right? I mean, it makes me feel very happy to know that there are copies of On Speck in the Merrill collection in Toronto.
00:48:47
Speaker
There's copies of OnSpec in the National Library in Ottawa or Hull, wherever the heck it is. There's a copy of every issue in the Alberta Provincial Archives, which I sent them last year before we left Alberta. There's actually even a couple of universities, and like there's a university in California that has always subscribed to OnSpec.
00:49:09
Speaker
and you know and And there's one in Germany, which always got OnSpec too, which really amazed me. um You know, they're around, they're out in the world. They're in people's private collections. Some people don't throw them away. Some people just keep them. And it's it's just, it just gives me a really warm, fuzzy feeling, I guess, just knowing that that they're out there.
00:49:32
Speaker
and it means that your name is out there, sure, you know, like maybe somebody will do their master's thesis about on-spec in 10 years while I'm still alive and breathing to talk to them about it. I don't know. Have there been any anthologies of some of your favorite stories or would there ever be?
00:49:50
Speaker
Well, several of these stories have actually shown up in other anthologies, yeah. But none about, like, no on-spec collections. Well, yeah, there's two. Oh, okay. Yeah, there's OnSpec the first five years, which we did with originally Tesseract Books, which was the Books Collective, which used to be Candace Dorsey's publication. So yeah ah you can now buy these through Edge. They're still available. You can buy them through Edge Publishing in Calgary. So this was on spec the first five years when we thought, oh, we've made it to five years. like And so again, we picked our favorite stories from the first five years of the magazine.
00:50:33
Speaker
And now that's where Carpe Diem ends up too, yeah. And Muffin was in here. that's awesome. There you go. Oh, People can buy that. We can plot that on the website. There's a story by Carl Schrader. yeah. Jason Kopalka, Wesley Herbert, Eileen Kernaghan, Daryl Murphy, McBride. think I'm going have pick that up.
00:50:54
Speaker
Keith Scott, Robert Boychuck, Hugh Spencer, Alice Major has a lovely poem in here called Mrs. Leakey's Ghost. I've always loved that. um You know, so so this was like to celebrate that we'd actually made it for five years. And then when we got to 25 years, Taiki Books in Calgary did an editor's favorite issue of the ensuing, you know, after the first five years, what was the next 20 years?
00:51:23
Speaker
And this is all the editor's favorite stories that we each had a hand in picking. chi but Those two books strike me as must-haves, I think, for any and a serious science fiction collector in Canada. Tyche still sends us royalties for sales on this one, so they're obviously buying it. yeah And you can buy it in you know paper or digital.
00:51:45
Speaker
so We can put those on the website. And will. and will' yeah um Okay, so as we wrap up, ah what is next for you then? For me, i'm I'm learning to enjoy being retired and it would be nice not to have to get up in the morning and immediately sit down at my computer.
00:52:06
Speaker
um It'll be nice to get up, enjoy my coffee, maybe go for a walk. Well, I should go for walks more often. Anyhow. And I'm looking at, you know, the possibility of of like hobbies.
00:52:20
Speaker
I took ah a watercolor painting class a few months back and I thought, gee, maybe I could do something like that. I'm useless at art. I mean, I've been terrible. But I thought, why not give it a shot, right? And then I went to ah one of those paint nights and uh, last month. And we did, a um, a Mod Lewis cat.
00:52:40
Speaker
That's great. Yeah. From, you know, her, her house, her, Mod Lewis was like near us, not too far from where we live. And, uh, So, you know, she's she's local. she's shes She's our baby. She's she's our person. we yeah Are you familiar with Maude Lewis, Mark? I have seen her paintings 100%. Yeah. We got prints all over this house. Yeah, I have 100% seen her paintings. yeah her Her actual house is in the museum in Halifax or in the art gallery, one of the two buildings in in Halifax. It was taken apart. and moved and reconstructed in in the museum.
00:53:20
Speaker
There is a steel was sort of a shape of the house, like ah ah you know like ah a replica, not a replica, it's just a steel structure where her house was that you can visit and you can kind of walk inside and go, this was small. And the location where the house was. And there's a man who lives, I think on the Digby neck who built his own replica of the Maude Lewis house and people can come in and visit and see it and tour it and and he copied all of the paintings all the stuff anything that was on the walls and everything he made copies of it and so yeah
00:54:01
Speaker
um So anyhow, I did this paint night. So I've got this beautiful, you know fake Maude Lewis picture in my bathroom. you know, why not? That you made, so that's good. That I made, right? yeah But at the same time, I'm now singing with two different choirs, one French, one English.
00:54:21
Speaker
And um I'm also with a group of women locally, a group of Acadian women, who ah we get together for fun every couple of weeks and just jam, which is you know fun. But then come January, we'll start putting together a show to put on during the Acadian Festival next August. Oh, wow. We'll be practicing you know every week, every two weeks for that until until the show. So you speak and sing in French? i can sing in French. My speaking in French is leaves a lot to be desired.
00:54:51
Speaker
But I'm surrounded by French speaking people. Right. And so most of the time they're not speaking English. And and I just pick up enough as as far as i go. But, you know, everybody here is fluently bilingual. and Yeah. So it doesn't really matter. I mean, the French choir, there's a couple of and other Anglophones in the choir besides myself. And so the director speaks both French and English when she's practicing with us.
00:55:18
Speaker
but So you have lots to do post on spec. Oh, gosh, yeah. I have thousands of books to read. i mean, there's so much reading for pleasure that I haven't been able to do.
00:55:31
Speaker
right time Right. Yeah, of course. And so now I can actually get more books out of the you know out of our stash that we've been buying for years that I just never had time to read.
00:55:43
Speaker
get more books out of the library and and just enjoy just the quiet and the peace and the no deadlines. And that'll be fun. Oh, I can just feel the relief.
00:55:56
Speaker
No deadlines, no deadlines. Exactly. Exactly. Mark, any final thoughts or questions? I just think it's wonderful. You're painting and singing. That's just, yeah. Whatever Kurt Vonnegut says about making your soul grow. It's art. and Art at any form is great.
00:56:13
Speaker
the And I might try, you know, needlepoint rug hooking or something. Yeah. It's all great. Yeah. stuff like that. Anything that I feel that it's, that I haven't tried. Yeah.
00:56:24
Speaker
Give it shot. Diane Walton, thank you very much for being on our podcast. We creative. Well, thank you so much for inviting me. Thank you.
00:56:55
Speaker
You've been listening to Recreative, a podcast about creativity and the works that inspire it. Recreative is produced by Mark Rainer and Joe Mahoney for Donovan Street Press Inc. in association with Monkey Joy Press.
00:57:08
Speaker
Technical production of music by Joe Mahoney, web design by Mark Rainer. You can support this podcast by checking out our guests' work, listening to their music, purchasing their books, watching their shows, and so on.
00:57:22
Speaker
You can find out more about each guest in all of our past episodes by visiting recreative.ca. That's re-creative.ca. You can contact us by emailing joemahoney at donovonstreetpress.com.
00:57:35
Speaker
We'd love to hear from you. Thanks for listening. Music