Hot Off the Presses

Ooof.  Finally, I have finished Issue #12 of my zine, GEMINI.  The gestation of this baby puts me squarely in the pachyderm family, with Issue #11 having come out way back in December 2009.  For awhile I worried that maybe it just wouldn't ever happen.  But 11 is an odd number to end on, and my collection of quotes from the muses was growing, and I was starting to get gentle reminders--most often from my subscribers' husbands, "Hey, do you still write your little newsletter thingy?"

I wrote my first issue of GEMINI five years ago, when E and Z were about nine months old.  I had only recently discovered motherhood literature (aka mommy-lit) in the form of Brain, Child magazine and the inimitable Hausfrau Mutha-zine.  I began to search for more mamazines and web sites and books on motherhood (don't ask me how I'd completely missed out on this phenomenon for the first four years of motherhood).  These writers became my lifeline as I felt myself sinking under the weight of these two needy (and increasingly mobile) babies and their big brother.  But not just the reading.  I found myself increasingly compelled to write my own stories and thus was born GEMINI (the title being a reference to twins).

Most days I'm not quite so desperate for a lifeline any more, and I have other outlets, which serve that function and steal my time and creative energy (ahem, this blog being the main one).  But I enjoyed putting this issue together, and I especially reveled in the rhythm and routine of it--laying out the pages, proofreading, taking it to our local print shop--and I plan to keep going with more issues in the future (though perhaps not on my previous every-four-months schedule).

I'll be getting issues for subscribers and trades into the mail by the end of the week, so keep your eyes peeled!

If you're not already a subscriber, you can buy this issue in one of two ways.  You can either send me $3 concealed cash or check to Andrea Lani (email me at andreaelani at yahoo dot com to trade mailing addresses) or you can use the PayPal button on the right side of the screen to order an issue for $3.50 (the 50 cents to cover PayPal's cut--which pretty much balances out your check, envelope and stamp!  Thanks to Jennifer from Syrendell for nudging me into the 21st century).

Oh, and I almost forgot, in this issue:

Raising Private Milo (reprint of Brain, Child essay)
Dragonfly Pond
The Boy in the Band
Poetry
Crude Cartoons (that is, crudely drawn, not crude rude)
And more!

For more about past issues of GEMINI see here (#11), here (#10), here (#7), (not sure where 8 and 9 went)