I recently published a horror short story as a zine on itch.io and ebay. Strawberry Gashes is a retro horror story about codependent friendship and flavored with cursed vhs tape, Riot Grrl punk music and zines, and irreverent 90s/early 2000s vibes (so pretty much my teen years). The best part, its a zine and that is what makes it perfect.
WTF is a Zine?
For those of you who don’t know what a zine is:
Zine (pronounced zeen like magazine) is a handmade self published book. Genres of zines range from personal stories (perzines) to fan art and commentary (fanzines) to rebellious, punk, queer, how-tos for dealing with the world at large. They can also be artistic expressions either visually or in written form, or, in this case, both.
Zines started back in the Harlem Renaissance when black writers couldn’t get published traditionally. They decided to take the publishing process into their own hands by making what they called “little magazines” to share essays, poetry, and more.
Later in the 80s and 90s queers and punks did the same thing. When traditional publishers and even print shops wouldn’t touch anything LGBTQ+ or anarchist/political, they made zines at home to get information and art out to their communities.
I share more about zines and how they should (and I think are) making a come back in my post about old school blogging and social media. You can read it here.
You can also get my mini-zine about what zines are and how to make one for free here.
Why This Story?
Let me back track and say that I didn’t set out to make Strawberry Gashes as a zine. While I was already making and interested in zines when I wrote it, my initially intention for this story was to traditionally publish it in an anthology. In fact, that was what inspired the story.
An anthology was calling for stories inspired by punk music. There was a lot of discussion about Green Day and Sex Pistols but my first instinct was to go to the 90s Riot Grrl movement. The song Strawberry Gashes by Jack Off Jill was on the Riot Grrl playlist I looked at and it immediately took me back. Just thinking of that song puts me back in 15 year old Dex’s body, laying on the floor of my best friend’s room, staring up at posters and listening to this song and others like it on repeat. It immediately gave me the inspiration for my story.
I poured teen me into Strawberry Gashes. How my friendships were mostly out of trauma bonds and so many were unhealthy to my own difficult relations with evangelical family. How turning to VHS tapes and art either saved me or gave me the comfortable dissociation I needed at the time to not kill myself.
My beta readers responded with how the story made them immediately think of 90/00s psychological horror. They felt instantly pulled back through time to the era of Goth (2002), Gypsy 83 (2001), Ginger Snaps (2000) and Girl, Interrupted (1999). While my story doesn’t follow similar paths as those movies, the vibes are there.
The thing is, Strawberry Gashes wasn’t accepted into the anthology. I was told it didn’t fit the other stories in the book, which I get. I’ve DNF’d anthologies because the stories felt all over the place or read some all the way through only to like one or two of the 15 in the book. The last thing I’d want is for my story to be in an anthology like that. So I didn’t take the rejection to heart, especially when my beta readers had such kind words to say about it. The rejection letter did say that they were planning a 2nd anthology and that I was welcome to resubmit it then.
So I had options. I could submit the story to another anthology or magazine. I could sit on it until the 2nd punk music anthology. Or I could self publish it in a personal collection of stories. I put the story in a file and worked on other projects for a while, figuring I would decide later what to do with it.
At the end of 2024, I started getting more into zine making. Its something I admired as a young teen and recently realized was still an ongoing sub culture. I made a few, mini zines and fan zines mostly, bought a few, and admired a ton out there. The best part about zine culture is it gets you thinking about the culture and systems of publication, art and art distribution, etc. I started thinking about zines as a way to play with my writing and get it in the hands of fellow weirdos.
That was when I picked Strawberry Gashes back up.
I played with how I wanted it to look. Created a background, clipped images that related to the story, and put it all together into what I hoped felt like an immersive art and story experience much like an illustrated book might be. The response I got from beta readers was exciting. They felt that the imagery elevated the story and the overall was much more effective than if the story had simply been printed in a book. That was when I realized that making a self-published, hand made zine wasn’t just to get words and art out there that others wouldn’t publish, that it could very well be better than traditional publishing!
I’m thrilled not only to offer Strawberry Gashes in this way but am contemplating other stories and ideas that might benefit from this style of creation and distribution. I look forward to sharing them with you on this journey.
