Local Color: Down My Local

By Charlie Kondek

I want to tell you about this new web-based “zine,” Local Color, and to do so I want to invite you inside my head for a moment.

It’s a colorful place at times. Several of my fantasies are colliding at once with my realities. First of all, I am thinking of this as an “origin story.” Any nerd knows that in the origin story, you start out as an ordinary person who falls into a vat of radioactive yogurt or is sucked through a quantum straw and comes out the other side with fabulous super powers, abilities that perhaps you yourself don’t understand yet. But this is a “team book,” which means that when each member of the team meets, they at first mistake each other for villains and have a tremendous, building-leveling, non-lethal brawl before realizing, oh, wait, we were on the same side the whole time. That makes me Professor Xavier to the zine’s X-Men. No, wait, I’m Batman. No, Captain America. Doc Savage?

Anyway, meanwhile, I’m imagining myself in shirtsleeves, suspenders, and chomping a cigar with my feet up on the scarred wooden desk of my corner office. I’m the publisher-in-chief of a daring new magazine. I’m staring at a blank, green, chalkboard and now I’m on my feet, gesturing wildly with my cigar, yammering at my editorial staff and contributors. “Who are we, as a magazine? What we do? What do we stand for? How will we be different? This magazine is about guts. It’s about grit. It’s about adventure. It’s political – no, it’s apolitical – no, it’s political without being political! Most of all it’s about truth. Dammit, I want 1,000 words on my desk from each of you by 3:00 this afternoon. Double for you, Jimmy Breslin! Now get outta my office!”

Here’s a fantasy that’s a bit more grounded in reality. I fantasize quite a bit, lately, about what I’m going to write. Now mind you, I’m not the kind of writer that puts things off or leaves things undone. I complete my projects; I always filed my newspaper stories on time; ditto my freelance pieces; regularly complete my short stories, treatments and other work in addition to my day job (oh, you have one of those, too?). I also have a novel I’m trying to publish. But ever since the birth of our second child, I have spent a lot more time thinking about writing than actually writing. I don’t see a problem with this, because what was true in Ecclesiastes is still true, today, that to everything there is a season, and right now I’m in a season where, when I’m not at work or kendo practice, I’m chasing around a toddler with a baby on my shoulder. I’ve been keeping a “workbook” during this time, and everything I’ve written in it are quickly scrawled fragments, germs of essays, ideas for stories, lines that could turn into stories. I’m not worried. I know the kids will grow older and, just as I did after the birth of our first child, I’ll get back to that workbook eventually.

But add that all up, mix it, bake it and eat it, and you’ll start to digest the idea behind Local Color. All writing, even fantasy, is a questing after truth, so now I will tell you the truth.

Local Color was born out of my desire to give myself and other writers in my circle an outlet for writing. All the contributors, at its inception, knew each other from an internet message board. Some of us have known each other for years. We’re from all over the world – North America, the UK, the Antipodes, India, Asia, South and Latin America, mainland Europe – but the internet has made us all local to each other. And what this magazine – or “zine,” or “blog,” or what have you – is about is exactly what any of these local colorfuls wants to write about. We are interested in literature, film, music, sports, politics, video games, comic books, mental health, spirituality, emotion, ideas, sex, philosophy… most of all, we are interested in words, and interested in what each of us wants to do with them.

So with that garbled manifesto, I welcome you. We also welcome your feedback and, eventually, when we have done more to set the tone, your submissions. Now get outta my office! I got some more daydreaming to do.