A few days ago, I'd decided that pursuing fiction-writing would be an entertaining way to pass some time. What I can say for certain is that I was, without a doubt, quite surprised by the odd places something as mundane as writing a silly pulp fiction serial would take me to.
A wee bit of background - I co-wrote the serial with my LLM copilot; at first, I'd decided a short-story format would be best, and published the anthology as an indexed series of entries - a spot for fictional media, unlike these logs. Drawing from my own background - having worked in a print shop - and a familiarity with samizdat, it had occurred to me that I can take the process one step further. Having been quite familiar with the concept of home-produced print, I opted to make some of my own.
At the moment, I'm briefly staying outside of the Sienna - couch-surfing, so to speak, which gives me plenty of space to work.
Now, samizdat refers to illegally-published literature, prevalent during the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. Prior to reforms permitting a wider assortment of content, many samizdat producers would type up manuscripts on typewriters with multiple sheets of carbon paper sandwiched between the roller and strikeplate - so as to make several copies at once.
Fortunately, my short stories are neither illegal, nor am I constrained by a typewriter; in fact, I have access to an excellent (albeit very cheap) inkjet printer. As I refill the cartridges myself, with bulk-purchased ink (or, at times, fountain-pen ink), I find myself with printing capacity to spare. In fact, the only issue would be a wearing printhead - easily remedied by the fact that I have several old, spare cartridges.
I thought it'd be absolutely hysterical to make a batch of little mini-zines - printed on A6 paper (conveniently, 1/8th of a standard A4 sheet of paper) - and to distribute them throughout Ontario. In a few weeks time, the first set of 30-40 hand-bound copies will be ready. I plan to leave them in random spots, ranging from random aisles at the local grocery stores, to various seats at buses, trains, and the like.
Hopefully, whoever stumbles upon them will be either confused, amused, or maybe even touched. An excellent side-misadventure to occupy me while I wait for my income to straighten itself out.
If someone reading this ends up finding one - well, I hope you have a swell time reading it.