I launched ATR earlier this year to give an official name and format to a blog that had taken on a life of its own. I'm very proud of what it has become. We've had writers from The Guardian, The Independent and The Sunday Times, interviews with TV stars, well known bloggers, comedians and authors. But I'm more excited about the non-household names that have been given a platform through this. I started it because I wanted to see whether it was possible to create a valid, interesting lifestyle publication which wasn't supported by advertising or promoting an aspirational way of living. And I think it's succeeded - although by its very nature it'll never be mainstream. ATR is humorous and kind of nerdy, it's "the magazine for everybody else". It's for people who don't relate to ordinary mags - or just want to read something different and as a result it has a cult following. And it is a hell of a lot of work. It's work I do enjoy doing, but I'll only keep it up for as long as I can sustain the standard. It frustrates me that there's a crappy "DIY zine" movement currently grabbing headlines, and that it claims to understand punk sensibilities because it makes a virtue out of amateurism. Although it's essentially self-indulgent and simple, it gets a lot more attention that ATR has ever had. I like to think that ATR has an old-school punk ethic of taking pride in your creative outputs. No room for scrappy bits of paper and unfunny scribbled biro comics here!
In 2003 and 2004 I was chief writer for Flock magazine, a Yorkshire publication produced by communications company
Stone Soup aimed at encouraging young entrepreneurs in the region. I reported on the "scene" in various parts of Yorkshire, for example - this feature is an area guide to Scarborough for young people. I also interviewed local artists and young people who had started exciting businesses in the region. I was roped in to help with fashion shoots, photography and every aspect of magazine journalism. In 2003 I was the Press Officer for the York Comedy Festival, organised by Stone Soup, a job which incorporated writing press releases and generating copy and ideas for their website. Needless to say, we had lots of fun.
Sauce was my first real experiment with self-publishing, and started as an interview I conducted with Cory Arcangel of
The Beige Programming Ensemble in 2003. It was a zine for people interested in retro-gaming and hacking and contained interviews with people who collected old computers, people who had worked out a way of streaming video through their ZX Spectrums, and people who had made clocks out of BBC Micros. There was an preview of a chapter from geek guru Danny O'Brien's unpublished book, a bit of fiction, and a diary of one woman's adventures in the world of internet dating ("Cyber With Leslie"). I spent a long time on it. I don't think anyone read it.
