Beatdom Now

From: http://www.beatdom.com/beatdom_now.htm

I want to start a second magazine - a sister publication for Beatdom. This has been a goal of mine for a long time, but Beatdom is a cruel mistress. She demands more attention than I can normally afford, and a second magazine might just kill me... But it might just make me, you and our readers all a little happier... It might just make the world a brighter place.

I want to depart from the world of the Beat Generation and focus on the world around us. Beatdom has always claimed to be both a study of the Beat Generation - literary, historical, cultural - but also professed an interest in exploring the world around us through the messages set forth by Ginsberg, Kerouac et al. We've published rants and musings on the modern world, and explored the reincarnations of the Beat Generation, through our new fiction and non-fiction.

And Beatdom will continue to do all that. It's not changing. Issue Five will follow in the style is the first four, and be entirely unaffected by the publication of Beatdom Now.

What I want from Beatdom Now is to take our regular writers and readers, and maybe a little of the style, and simply forget all our heroes. Beatdom is a literary journal. We explore the past. But in Beatdom Now we will take the stylistic teachings, and moral messages, and just be journalists...

That may sound strange, because Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs etc etc were not journalists. In fact, during the heyday of the Beat Generation they weren't even particularly interested in the politics of the world - they wanted to take refuge and carve out a space for themselves.

But we are taking style and morals from the Beats, as well as from Hunter S. Thompson and other late twentieth century writers and artists. I want to publish creative non-fiction that is dedicated to the destruction of injustice, and the dissipation of illusions. I want to read the sort of thing you wouldn't find in all the biased, dumb popular press outlets.

I know Gonzo was a one man genre, and that people look foolish for taking too much inspiration from Thompson's work, but that needn't be the case. Take an intelligent look, and write your own report on the world. Forget drink, drugs and parody; remember truth, skill and sledgehammer vitriol.

Let's change the world with another adventurous assault on the publishing world.

Submissions are now open for Issue One, with no deadline currently given... Find something in this world that makes you sick, and use your words to destroy it.

Massive Update

Well, it's a whole year now since the last issue of Beatdom magazine was released, and almost two years since the Rodney Munch Project. In that time a lot has changed for this writer. I've lived on three different continents, visited eight countries, held four jobs, and made and lost many, many friends. Inspiration has come and gone and continues to cycle thusly, but I'm taking this little burst of enthusiasm to finally move towards assembling that near ridiculous idea: My Chinese Democracy, Beatdom Issue Three!

So go ahead, writers and artists, and beginning bugging me with submissions so that I have as little writing to do myself. Send me everything you've got on the Beat Generation and the counterculture.

Also, as a little treat, to whet your Appetites for Destruction, I'm in the process of a massive update. I'm finally throwing all of the articles and features from the first two issues onto the website, where they can be read in classy black & white for free, forever. That's let everyone see the quality of Beatdom and let them buy an issue when they so choose.

Also, I'd like to thank the visitors to www.beatdom.com for keeping the counter rising, and to all the well-wishers who still keep finding this already outdated publication and reading and loving it. Your kind words keeping me going.

Yours, always, David S Wills