08-20-2022, 10:58 AM
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Unsolicited, I had a sheet of postage stamps (20) arrive in the mail, one day this past week.
I'll take that as a good sign that at least one person likes PBM Unearthed.
I'm just now getting around to printing out copies of Issue #5 to send to a few inmates. I decided to also send them a copy of Raven Zachary's An Introduction to Play-by-Mail Gaming.
And for anyone who is still reading this far into this posting, Issue #6 is finished. I'll just spend a little time later on, today, trying to sift it and weed out any typographical errors and double-check all of the hyperlinks scattered throughout it for the image ads and such.
Issue #16 will be pushing the proverbial envelope out to 16 pages. It wasn't really a planned thing, just sort of how it worked out. We're joined in #16 by some fellow that goes by the name of Wayne.
The Restructuring of PBM series gets a break, and I delve into an article about a PBM game, instead. Richard Lockwood will be back with us for Issue #6, also. Even Richard might want to read this issue.
One of the great eternal quandaries that all PBM magazines seemed to face over the years was the unending struggle to "persuade" others to send submissions in. Well, that problem is no less real, if all that you're publishing is a PBM newsletter.
No sense beating a dead horse, but at the same time, just a reminder that PBM Unearthed could use a chunk of your thoughts about something PBM-related, now and again. before something can be published, there must be something to publish. It's a simple concept, but quite an accurate one.
It doesn't matter if you're a "good" writer, or a writer at all. Other PBM gamers out there would still love to hear from you. Your PBM thoughts and memories will invariably jog their PBM thoughts and memories. Someone has to be the villain and remind others, time and time and time again, to send something in.
Tomorrow's publication of Issue #6 of PBM Unearthed will put us officially over the halfway point to the initial goal that I set for this PBM newsletter of 10 issues. Boy, it's just sort of flown by, hasn't it?
Is it working, though? Or is it all kind of a pointless exercise in futility? How many times do people want to see the exact, same PBM ad all over again? Or should I strip all of the ads out, and just convert the thing to text-only format?
I don't know what everyone else thing about the front cover art that I have been using, but on my end when I print these things out to send to inmates, the front cover art (which is old comic book art that has long since fallen into the public domain and repurposed decades later as covert art for a PBM newsletter of limited circulation) actually comes out pretty good. Maybe the printing process, itself, compensates for some of the imperfections that were inflicted on the old comic books with the passage of time.
I repurpose them because I think that they are both colorful and imaginative artwork. Plus, not everyone will have seen them before, and they don't cost anything, and I don't even have to track down an artist to do front cover art pieces for each issue of PBM Unearthed. I could just eliminate the front cover art, or I could shrink it down to a much smaller size, but all things considered, I rather like the way that the front covers for PBM Unearthed end up turning out. You, of course, are free to feel otherwise. It's not going to hurt my feelings, just because you might prefer that I use something else to decorate the front covers.
And on a positive note, it appears that the worst of my struggles with software are behind me, now. I still suck at crafting layouts, but at least now I don't seem to have to contend any longer with issues such as drifting images and such. That's a HUGE time saver on my end. Issue #6 will be the first issue published with this new approach. I did try it years ago, back when I was publishing Suspense & Decision magazine, but it wasn't as mature in its development, as it is now. So, before anyone asks, that's why I didn't use it, way back then.
It's not too much longer before Jon Capps comes down the publishing mountain with Issue #21 of the new Suspense & Decision magazine. That should be a big boost for the PBM gaming community. S&D will be published bi-monthly, so PBM Unearthed is aimed at trying to fill a little bit of the void in time between issues of S&D. Hopefully, everyone will welcome the new Suspense & Decision with open arms. Jon will give you a real magazine to peruse, I'm sure. I think that it will be magnitudes of order of positive difference from anything that I ever managed to publish, back when Suspense & Decision first appeared out of the blue, way back when.
Enjoy your Saturday. Enjoy your weekend.
Happy gaming,
Charles
Unsolicited, I had a sheet of postage stamps (20) arrive in the mail, one day this past week.
I'll take that as a good sign that at least one person likes PBM Unearthed.
I'm just now getting around to printing out copies of Issue #5 to send to a few inmates. I decided to also send them a copy of Raven Zachary's An Introduction to Play-by-Mail Gaming.
And for anyone who is still reading this far into this posting, Issue #6 is finished. I'll just spend a little time later on, today, trying to sift it and weed out any typographical errors and double-check all of the hyperlinks scattered throughout it for the image ads and such.
Issue #16 will be pushing the proverbial envelope out to 16 pages. It wasn't really a planned thing, just sort of how it worked out. We're joined in #16 by some fellow that goes by the name of Wayne.
The Restructuring of PBM series gets a break, and I delve into an article about a PBM game, instead. Richard Lockwood will be back with us for Issue #6, also. Even Richard might want to read this issue.
One of the great eternal quandaries that all PBM magazines seemed to face over the years was the unending struggle to "persuade" others to send submissions in. Well, that problem is no less real, if all that you're publishing is a PBM newsletter.
No sense beating a dead horse, but at the same time, just a reminder that PBM Unearthed could use a chunk of your thoughts about something PBM-related, now and again. before something can be published, there must be something to publish. It's a simple concept, but quite an accurate one.
It doesn't matter if you're a "good" writer, or a writer at all. Other PBM gamers out there would still love to hear from you. Your PBM thoughts and memories will invariably jog their PBM thoughts and memories. Someone has to be the villain and remind others, time and time and time again, to send something in.
Tomorrow's publication of Issue #6 of PBM Unearthed will put us officially over the halfway point to the initial goal that I set for this PBM newsletter of 10 issues. Boy, it's just sort of flown by, hasn't it?
Is it working, though? Or is it all kind of a pointless exercise in futility? How many times do people want to see the exact, same PBM ad all over again? Or should I strip all of the ads out, and just convert the thing to text-only format?
I don't know what everyone else thing about the front cover art that I have been using, but on my end when I print these things out to send to inmates, the front cover art (which is old comic book art that has long since fallen into the public domain and repurposed decades later as covert art for a PBM newsletter of limited circulation) actually comes out pretty good. Maybe the printing process, itself, compensates for some of the imperfections that were inflicted on the old comic books with the passage of time.
I repurpose them because I think that they are both colorful and imaginative artwork. Plus, not everyone will have seen them before, and they don't cost anything, and I don't even have to track down an artist to do front cover art pieces for each issue of PBM Unearthed. I could just eliminate the front cover art, or I could shrink it down to a much smaller size, but all things considered, I rather like the way that the front covers for PBM Unearthed end up turning out. You, of course, are free to feel otherwise. It's not going to hurt my feelings, just because you might prefer that I use something else to decorate the front covers.
And on a positive note, it appears that the worst of my struggles with software are behind me, now. I still suck at crafting layouts, but at least now I don't seem to have to contend any longer with issues such as drifting images and such. That's a HUGE time saver on my end. Issue #6 will be the first issue published with this new approach. I did try it years ago, back when I was publishing Suspense & Decision magazine, but it wasn't as mature in its development, as it is now. So, before anyone asks, that's why I didn't use it, way back then.
It's not too much longer before Jon Capps comes down the publishing mountain with Issue #21 of the new Suspense & Decision magazine. That should be a big boost for the PBM gaming community. S&D will be published bi-monthly, so PBM Unearthed is aimed at trying to fill a little bit of the void in time between issues of S&D. Hopefully, everyone will welcome the new Suspense & Decision with open arms. Jon will give you a real magazine to peruse, I'm sure. I think that it will be magnitudes of order of positive difference from anything that I ever managed to publish, back when Suspense & Decision first appeared out of the blue, way back when.
Enjoy your Saturday. Enjoy your weekend.
Happy gaming,
Charles