Guest Blogger: Cameron Ashley - BACK IN BLACK (AND WHITE)

BACK IN BLACK (AND WHITE) by Cameron Ashley

Ten years ago, I walked into the old Kill City on Greville Street, started talking to the English bruiser behind the counter and walked out with books by Eddie Bunker and Andrew Vachss.

The bruiser’s name was David Honeybone. He turned out to be a total sweetheart and somehow I ended up being recruited for his new magazine. It was called Crime Factory. It ran from 2000-2003 and I loved this thing. Man, I loooooved it. Everyone who worked on it loved it: ask Craig McDonald. People who were written about in it loved it: ask Ken Bruen. We had subscribers all over the place – a modest but okay number, the way I understand it, especially for a magazine produced in Preston.

The plug got pulled for a variety of reasons, none of which it’s really my place to go into, but when it happened, it was a heartbreaker.

I went off to Japan for a few years, taught, traveled, wrote a big-ass horror novel that still sits on my hard drive and came home to Melbourne.

I missed CF.

I would pester Dave about it from time to time during our semi-regular drinking sessions and he basically told me that he’d put it to bed and that was that. Fair enough.

I still missed CF.

Then a funny thing happened. I got bored having comic pitches rejected and started doing short stories again for the first time since the mid-nineties. I got to know, amongst others, guys like Paulie D, Chad Eagleton, Frank Bill, Keith Rawson and the guy who pretty much forms a pulpy mini hive-mind with me, Jimmy Callaway. These guys are good. Like, really, really good. They are also cool and they are helpful and they are driven.

I thought about CF. I told Keith about CF. We shot emails back and forth, put together some names and tee-heed to ourselves online.

I got Dave drunk and told him about it. He got a spark in his eye and he nearly buckled. In the end though, his resolve held. The spark might’ve been caused by the Mountain Goat with the Jamie chasers…

He did, however, let Keith and I go for it.

It’s not going to be the same. It’s going to be online, for one. We’re not going through print headaches, thank you, and we have other stuff to write. Keith and I are not designers. We are not editors. I type with two fingers and have a stress ball by my keyboard. Keith, I dunno how he types except he’s mostly naked when he does it.

Call it Son of Crime Factory. Call it a bad idea. Call it biting off more than we can chew.

Whatever.

CF returns in January 2010. It continues in the spirit of the original, but is souped-up with some extra crazy fiction. Contributors? We have some names involved. Not going to drop any just yet, but, trust me, they are good and will surprise you. The new CF might not look super-flash, but within its lo-fi pages will be a lot of gold and you’ll be able to download it and print it off in all its old-school zine glory instead of having your retinas burned out by reading the screen.

Who knows how long we’ll last? Maybe we’ll wrap up after nine issues in honour of Volume One. Maybe Keith and I and others will keep it rolling in its new kind of hippie co-op way for years. Whatever happens, we’ll make it good for the duration.

Someone bought the Kill City name, moved it to a basement shop along Swanston Street and gave up selling new books. About a quarter of the place is crime and, really, there seems little interest in preserving whatever legacy, no matter how minor, the original shop had outside of a sandwich board with the old logo on it.

Us? We’re going to make Dave proud. So much so, he’ll want to help out. Just wait.

If you want to email us, you can: crimefactoryzine@gmail.com

If you want to tweet us, you can: @crimefactory

Site and launch date to be confirmed. Stay tuned. Good times guaranteed.

Cameron Ashley lives in Brunswick, Melbourne. He’s done stories for Plots with Guns, a Twist of Noir, Powder Burn Flash, The Flash Fiction Offensive and is upcoming at Darkest Before the Dawn. He figures it’s about time he attempted a novel set at home, since he complains about the general lack of quality in Australian crime fiction constantly (foot, meet mouth).