interview with eic and author colin gee
by David Estringel
B+H: So, before we get into your writing, I’m curious to know what inspired you to start The Gorko Gazette, as well as create its unique platform (humor and literature).
CG: The Gorko Gazette was the name of a zine I wrote, printed, and forced on friends and family when I was a kid in the 90s. It was my attempt at satire and humor and self-expression. When I started submitting my writing in 2020 after twenty years of doing other things I realized immediately that I needed some cachet in the game and was casting about for names for a Gorko-like mag I planned to start, to help launch me to immortality. I was pondering names like Overhand Spoon or Fetch Me A Ladder Jeeves or even [bullshit generic lit mag name like Lavender Boot] when I remembered The Gorko and immediately knew that that domain would be available. Gorko doesn’t even mean anything! It also gives the rag some antiquity, with our periodic Classic Gorko features, clips from the old zines.
B+H: The Gorko Gazette has gone through some changes as of late in terms of its aesthetic. Very slick. Very stylish. I would even go as far as to say very deliberate (i.e., thoughtful) in terms of layout and design, especially with the graphics you recently have been incorporating onto the site. All of it gorgeous btw. What brought about the change?
CG: One day I got bored with the 2021 look, and e-publishing is easy. My real problem is showing restraint and staying on brand. My fav lit mags are minimalist, don’t submit and Citywide Lunch are two that are just title and text without graphics. I seethe with jealousy when I look at their websites, but I know deep down that The Gorko is a different animal, it needs to be ostentatious.
B+H: What do folks need to know about submitting to The Gorko Gazette? What are you looking for in a sub? More importantly, what DON’T you want to see in a submission?
CG: Gorko’s bread and butter is satire, though anything overtly political will get you roadhoused. It was with great reluctance that we started taking poetry and flash fiction, but what we ended up with was a unique corpus of absurdist and literary writing and art that will jump out at you, and hopefully make you shit your socks.
B+H: It goes without saying that being an EIC of a lit mag, especially one that publishes on a rolling-basis, is a pretty time-consuming gig. How do you manage to carve out time to write novels and publish in other lit mags, much less write, when you have so much pulling at your time? Honestly, I am still trying to work that “bad boy” out.
CG: I don’t have any children or friends.
B+H: While we are on the subject, you have some stuff coming up pretty soon at Blood+Honey and also at Urban Pigs Press—a novel to be exact. Tell us a little about your short fiction piece, “Spa boot,” which dropped at Blood+Honey on July 16th. Totally love the piece and how you incorporate local flavor into the narrative, but where the hell did that story come from? Literally, if I had to describe it in one word, I think “fringe” would be the one I choose. The interplay of POV, plot, and characterization are delightfully unexpected (almost deviant). So good.
CG: The title came to me and then I had to fill in the details. This works for me sometimes, it is free association, for instance I’ll do one right now: the title is, let’s see, “Grandpa on the hog”, and now my job is to justify the title with some kind of character or event. Clearly the hog is a motorcycle or a pig. Or maybe it is grandma, aw geeze. This may be a terrible way to write, of course, since it turns into a story for me only about one time in ten. My computer is littered with forsaken entities. Once in a while though I shit a fully formed gem.
B+H: How much of ‘Colin’ (and his life) gets woven into the tapestry that is your creative work? I mean, for writers, most everything is fodder for the page. With those who gravitate toward more surreal styles, however, it’s harder to glean fact from fiction. Sometimes the surrealist lens makes it easier to be transparent, while other times it creates a cleverly veiled distance. Where might you fall within that spectrum?
CG: Who is this Colin you speak of.
B+H: So, your novel Robinson Crusoe Maybe (Urban Pig Press) is coming out July 20th, so congratulations on that. Give us the 411, the deets, the skinny.
CG: RCM is an absurdist adventure novel (now out from Urban Pigs Press!) about a man cast away on a desert island who is definitely not Robinson Crusoe: he is loving every single fucking moment of it. It is the kind of book I have always wanted to write, a tornado of the unexpected, full of pathos, terrible decisions, and one-liners.
B+H: We just published some sample chapters from your novel. Anything our readers should know for context before diving in?
CG: Each of these excerpts is about the length of a RCM chapter, and the style is digressive, with each chapter adding or taking away pieces seemingly at random. In the end you get the whole picture. So here are three chapters that add a bit of backstory for the protagonist, strengthen the relationship between him and his talking parrot, introduce his cave complex and cenote and aerie lookout, as well as a suspicion of survivors cast away on a neighboring island. All of these are important elements of the story that will receive more and more attention.
B+H: So, time for some shameless self-promotion. What are you and/or The Gorko Gazette working now? Anything about your glamorous life as an EIC and author that our readers must know?
CG: Submissions are always open at The Gorko. Take a look at the site to get a sense of our flair. Follow us on Twitter playground @GorkoThe for highjinks.
B+H: What three pieces of advice would you give up-and-coming writers out there as they navigate their ways through their craft and the dog-eat-dog world of publishing?
CG: Don’t be in a rush to get published. Do the my mother in a mirror check, what would my mom think? If there is too much cum all over it, at least would it make her proud as great literature? Send out only your best stuff (except to Blood + Honey because they will take anything). (Jk jk, Blood + Honey rocks, people.) Don’t carpet bomb (sim submit to hundreds of places), or we will bomb you back.
BONUS QUESTION:
B+H: In terms of literary magazines’ relevance and sustainability, where do you see them headed? Where do they need to go?
GG: I am constantly surprised by the quality and ferocity of the writing cropping up in my favorite lit mags, and for me that is the start and end of the game. If it is good art, we have already won.