Tulsa Zine Fest!!!!!!!

The Tulsa Zine Fest just wrapped up and it was amazing! I found a ton of great zines to read and handed out almost fifty copies of both issues of my zine, Exercising Demons. It was rather cool to meet and talk to people who had tables and share info with them. Any perspective is nice to have and there were people who are in the early stages of zine making to those that have been doing it for years. Quite a few of them loved the name of my zine. They came from Kansas, St Louis, Stigler, OKC, other places and locally too. Exercising Demons first issue came out in April and I had to rush to get the second one done in time for today. Last night after work I came home and had to start gluing them together. I had to do that because I screwed up. I procrastinated getting it together and instead of taping everything down to get my master copy ready and then gluing it in place, I skipped the taping part and just started gluing. After everything was copied and I needed to put the pages together in order, I realized I had messed up and could not staple them. Hey, I'm still learning.

Here's a picture of the loot I got at the Tulsa Zine Fest.

I spent thirty-five of the forty dollars I won at the last Ok, So Story Slam on zines plus some of the people here just traded me a copy of their zine after I had given them mine. Soon I hope to have all of the kinks ironed out of this zine thing and then I'll start selling mine. I really hope that the fest comes back next year and I can be on the other side of the table. I'll say right now that I'll do what it takes to help out to continue something so cool. Zines are the ultimate in self-publishing for me. We have Jay Hancock, the owner of Holy Mountain record store here in Tulsa and his wife to thank for not only the zine fest but also for making zines available in the store. That's what got me started reading and now writing them. Holy Mountain also has been doing some in-stores for local bands which is a good way to expose yourself (not that way) to talented bands for free and then further support them. Jay has done a lot so go in and help out the store by buying something you like. That way we can keep stuff like the Zine Fest happening and that's a very good thing.

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.