[Shameless plug] Part 1 of my interview on Mike Duran's deCOMPOSE blog today

Mike Duran interviewed me in my role as RGR Overlord for deCOMPOSE today.
Part 1 is up now:
http://mikeduran.com/?p=13102&cpage=1

Interview w/ Johne Cook of Raygun Revival — Pt. 1

by Mike Duran · 1 comment <http://mikeduran.com/?p=13102#comments>

In our continuing series on indie presses and the ever-changing face
of the publishing
industry, I’m excited to welcome Johne Cook to deCOMPOSE.  John is one of
the founders and editors of Raygun Revival
<http://www.raygunrevival.com/>(RGR), a digital mag that describes
itself as “a throwback publication that
revisits space opera and golden age sci-fi.” RGR features some fantastic
stories and incredible artists, some of whose work I will sprinkle along the
way. Johne is a technical writer by day and creative writer / editor at
night. I’m impressed with Johne’s knowledge of the industry and the passion
(and humor) he brings to the discussion.  Johne graciously agreed to answer
a few of my questions. I hope you enjoy the first of this two-part
interview.

* * *

*MIKE: Johne, thanks so much for taking the time to be with us. There’s a
lot of debate about the state of the industry and the future of books and
publishers. Is it safe to say that indie publishers are booming? And if so,
are the factors that have contributed to this a good or bad thing?*

JOHNE: Videogames are booming. Indie publishers are flourishing.  But I
worry that books themselves (in physical or digital form) are quaint and
have to argue with ever-increasing competition. Learning to read is one of
the cardinal signs of advancing civilization. Choosing *not* to read must
surely be one of the signs of a falling civilization. But I digress.

There is, of course, a lot of activity in the publishing / reading
community, a radical shake-up of the likes of which I have not seen in my
lifetime. Speaking for myself, the very factors that are enabling / forcing
these changes have created a season of opportunity for anybody with vision,
gumption, and initiative.<http://mikeduran.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/RGR-57.jpg>

There are many factors that combined to make this surge possible. The ones
I’m most interested in are pragmatic. I remember being a co-founder of an
Unreal Tournament clan (read: online videogame club) in late 1999. We
experienced some early notoriety because our clan hosted our own broadband
server instances where other players could come and play our particular
flavor of the game with decent performance. In the era of dial-up and high
latency, our six servers were centrally-located in North Carolina and
quickly vaulted to the top of the server lists. The difference (and secret)
was our early servers were hosted out of a closet of a bank and boasted a
Ten MB/s half-duplex connection. We had a connection that players trying to
host their own servers off dial-up connections couldn’t begin to match.

We’ve come a long way since then. Personal Computers have gotten faster,
cheaper, and more powerful, broadband connections are faster and more widely
affordable, monitors are flatter, thinner, and larger, hard drives are now
recorded in Terabytes instead of Gigabytes or Megabytes. Rapidly improving
technology has made it possible for more people to make their dreams into
reality on a limited budget.

I will say that there’s more opportunity for self-made creative types than
at any time in human history. For my part, I walked away from hosting
videogame servers in 2003, and, with some like-minded friends, started Ray
Gun Revival (RGR) in July of 2006, something we could not have as readily
done in 1999. At RGR, we focused on publishing space opera and golden age
sci-fi stories that might not have otherwise have seen the light of day.
We’ve published 57 .PDF issues and four full months of weekly HTML content —
that’s positive for space opera. In our case, I’d argue technology itself is
neither good nor bad, it’s what you do with it that counts.  When we looked
around at the landscape, instead of saying, “Somebody outta do a space opera
magazine,” we just did it, and we’ve kept doing it as the entire publishing
landscape has changed around us. Technology has helped us to easily adapt
while keeping our day jobs and our family lives intact. That’s good for us,
and it’s good for our readers.

<http://mikeduran.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/RGR-banner-june2011.jpg>

*MIKE: Tell us about Raygun Revival. What prompted you to start it? Are you
a natural entrepreneur, did you see a void that needed filled, or do you
just love space opera and golden age sci-fi so much that you couldn’t be
apart from it?*

JOHNE: In one word: *Firefly*. Add in a dash of kismet, a bash of bitter
circumstance, and three genre rebels, and you get a perfect storm of
opportunity too good to pass up.

I met Paul online in the mid-to-late 90s on an e-mail list for the Christian
rock band *Daniel Amos*. DA’s always been sort of a black sheep group that
Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) never quite knew what to do with. As a
bit of a black sheep myself, I like the vibe. It fits the way mere
convention never has. I joined another list Paul was on a couple of years
later that exemplified that same sort of vibe in the arts; people who
enjoyed film, poetry, stories, and novels. While on that list, I learned
something interesting about Paul that changed my life. (By now, he probably
hates when I tell this story, heh.) While
<http://mikeduran.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/RGR-46.jpg>working in the
mailroom of a company in Omaha, Paul funded and directed his own
character-based film with his cousin, Chad Leahy (keep that name in mind —
Chad’s the one who would later design the RGR logo and initial art). When I
heard about that, I thought that if he could pursue his creative dreams from
such humble beginnings, the only thing stopping me from doing something
similarly audacious was my own lack of vision and initiative.

I met Lee King in 2003 over at *Deep Magic* magazine where I submitted short
pieces for monthly writing challenges. *Deep Magic *was an amazing Fantasy
magazine with high production values. At the time, they had the most
phenomenal covers in the business. I decided then and there that if I ever
became involved with a Sci-Fi magazine, I wanted to follow their example. In
2004, I worked with Lee as Associate Editors at Bill Snodgrass’ *The Sword
Review*. A year after that, we learned that Rebecca Shelley was stepping
down from *Dragons, Knights, and Angels* magazine and was looking for
someone to take the helm. Bill asked me if I’d go over there for a spell as
Managing Editor, and I agreed, taking Lee King and Selena Thomason with me.
As much as I enjoyed my time at DKA, I was never completely comfortable with
the explicit Christian focus of the publication. I’ve never understood the
utility of preaching to the choir. Lee and I had many conversations about
how many Christians still didn’t get F/SF. We felt like we were lost between
genres, too religious for mainstream F/SF and too speculative for mainstream
Christians. I’ve never quite understanding the insular vibe of a group whose
primary marching orders, as I understood it, is to take their Good News to
the world outside. I happened to be available when DKA needed an editor, but
I came to view my primary focus there as an interim figure. I felt others
would likely thrive in the environment where I found myself squirming.

I’d recently discovered *Firefly* on DVD and in 2004 wrote a 55k word novel
for NaNoWriMo <http://www.nanowrimo.org/> that featured a very *Firefly*-esque
vibe, a steampunk swashbuckling pirate story that I always thought would
eventually morph into space opera once the story got off-planet.  I’d bought
the *Firefly* DVDs at a Wal-Mart, watched five minutes of the pilot, and was
instantly smitten. I consumed the series in great gulps of three or four
episodes per night after work. I thought it was cool what Joss Whedon was
able to talk about with his disparate characters, including riffing on
religion via Shepherd Book. What I observed to be truths about life and
belief shared in that environment seemed to be going out to people who could
get the most mileage out of it, and that’s where my heart wanted to be.

As it happened, Paul was going through a really rough patch in his life at
that point, and we turned to chatting about *Firefly* on IM I think as a
defense mechanism, a way to get his mind off a relationship that was falling
apart despite his best efforts. (You can read more about that in the
editorial called The Final Proclamation in Issue
57<http://www.raygunrevival.com/Published/RGR_0057_2010.pdf>,
our last .pdf issue. Brings a tear to my eye every time I read that
editorial.) Around the same time, I tested the waters. I’d been talking with
Bill about the <http://mikeduran.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/RGR_43.jpg>possibility
of doing a space opera / sci-fi thing if we could find someone to take over
at DKA, thinking that we might be able to put something together over the
course of a year. Instead, things came together in just 24 hours. We asked
Selena  Thomason what she thought about taking over at DKA, and she leapt at
the opportunity. That freed me up to focus my efforts where I thought they’d
be more effective.

While talking with Bill about starting a new ‘zine, and he said another
person had been talking with him about a similar idea and said we should get
together. Unbeknownst to me, it was my friend and co-editor Lee King. Paul,
Lee, and I got together in IM and quickly came up with an idea, a name, and
a schtick, and RGR was born. Instead of founding co-editors, we called
Ourselves the Overlords, and it just sort of stuck. We loved the quality of
*Firefly* and wanted to take that enthusiasm and share it with a whole new
generation of readers who’d never heard of Doc Smith or Miles Vorkosigan.

We also had an idea to resurrect the idea of the serial novel, the ongoing
episodic story where you could follow new adventures by the same heroic /
tragic characters week after week. That was a challenge because at the time,
nobody was doing serial fiction. To prime the pump, each of the Overlords
agreed to write a proof-of-concept serial novel, and because we were
initially thinking of putting out weekly content, we recruited up-and-coming
author Sean T.M. Stiennon to fill out the fourth slot. Sean wrote a classic
old school sci-fi adventure called *Memory Wipe*. Lee wrote *Deuces Wild*, a
space western with a cynical gambler and a space cowboy and their adventures
in hostile space. Paul contributed *Jasper Squad*, a riff on Firefly with
his own unique twist, and I resurrected my NaNo novel idea, *The Adventures
of the Sky Pirate*. We published 48 or so biweekly issues, and then reverted
to monthly updates. This July starts our sixth year of publication, and
we’re back to publishing weekly content.

*MIKE: As you mentioned, after 57 issues, Raygun Revival underwent some
changes. What were those changes and how did you reach the place to require
them? Where are you at in your operations now, both staff and volume.
*

* <http://mikeduran.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/RGR_newlogo.jpg>*

**JOHNE: If it isn’t yet incredibly obvious, I’d like to direct your
attention to the name “Bill Snodgrass.” Lee and I knew Bill from *Deep Magic
* magazine, where we were all contributors. When Bill got together with his
lifelong buddy Cameron Walker and started *The Sword Review*, I spent many
happy afternoons on my commute home talking to Bill on the phone about TSR
and our views about Christians, fiction, and our roles in that world. After
starting *The Sword Review*, Bill needed a bookkeeping entity to keep track
of all the non-profit numbers associated with the enterprise, and *Double-edged
Publishing* was born. *After Dragons, Knights, & Angels *was added to the
fold (and later became *MindFlights*), new zines started popping up at an
accelerated rate. *Fear & Trembling* (Christian horror) was added to the
fold, followed by *Haruah* (a Guideposts-like inspiration / devotional
magazine). There was a youth magazine, and talks of others, one dedicated to
Romance stories, a Western magazine, another one dedicated to Mysteries.
Bill’s wife jokingly referred to DEP as an ‘empire,’ but instead of being
the emperor, Bill was behind the scenes for all of it. Instead of Ming the
Merciless, think Wizard of Oz. Bill had a true servant’s heart and wanted
you to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

But this is how you know how important one man can be — what happens to the
empire when that one man is no longer able to do everything he used to do?
If he’s just a figurehead, the engine keeps on going. If he’s irreplaceable,
the entire thing comes down. Bill was the latter.

After years of indefatigable service behind the scenes, hosting everything,
paying for all the stories for all the magazines through a series of
donations (and, I suspect, out of his own pocket), the economy went south,
Bill’s web hosting company had to close, and suddenly the various DEP
magazines had a choice to make. Bill moved from webmaster to seminary
student and teacher, and new owners were lined up to keep the POD arm of DEP
running. However, they had no interest in running the magazines, and the
various magazine editors got together to decide what to do next. Some of the
zines struck out on their own (MindFlights), some found new homes (Fear &
Trembling landed with Lyn Perry’s Residential Aliens group), and some folded
outright.

And then there was RGR. The Overlords had this idea that we’d transition
from a primarily .pdf ‘issue’ delivery system to a more modern blog-based
HTML delivery system, but we really didn’t have the technical knowledge to
make it happen. After Issue 57, Ray Gun Revival went on hiatus as we
grappled with what to do next, but it looked like one thing was apparent —
despite our best efforts, we were going nowhere fast. That’s not to say we
weren’t putting our best face on
it<http://www.speculativefaith.com/2010/09/13/changes-in-the-writing-industry-rgr/>,
but our intentions were grander than our abilities.

And then, as they say, the miracle occurred.

While we were thrashing around, I got an e-mail out of the blue from Jordan
Lapp, founder / editor of *Every Day Fiction*. We knew Jordan, and had
published him twice in the pages of RGR. He’d heard about the dissolution of
DEP and wanted to know what our plans were. We hemmed and hawed but it must
have been clear that we had nothing going that we couldn’t be talked out of.
Jordan approached me in September of 2010. He said he really respected RGR
and liked what we were doing and asked if EDF could help out. As we talked,
it quickly became clear that they had everything we needed without asking
for any editorial restrictions. It was a dream deal. Basically, their pitch
was to host RGR, provide admin and technical support, pay semi-pro rates for
stories of up to 4k words, all with the goal of eventually becoming a
publication worthy of a best Semi-Pro Hugo nomination. And Jordan repeated
that they basically intended to take an editorial hands-off approach and let
the Overlords do our schtick and continue to find and publish space opera
and golden age sci-fi stories with a fun and adventurous pulp feel.

To make a long story short, that’s exactly what they did. We Overlords are
arrogant and imperious, but we’re not complete fools. We leapt at the
opportunity, and went live again in February, 2011 after a hiatus from
August, 2010.

* * *

Please check back in later this week for Part Two of my interview with Johne
Cook.



Johne Cook
| http://raygunrevival.com | http://authorculture.blogspot.com |*
*
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