1 - Demo

October 2005

PRINT EDITION: Sold out

For the pilot issue of Fuselit, the submissions process was more of a solicitation process. We approached writers whose work we’d enjoyed on writing sites, or in workshops, and asked them to respond to the idea of the issue. The results were encouragingly varied, and the whole thing was put together in an ancient version of Quark, photocopied and stapled in the UEA library and sold from a little table in the student union for 50p. We also started a mailing list at this point, to gradually build a following. We also naively thought at this point that Fuselit would be a monthly magazine.

The cover featured a picture of a baby with big hands. Why? Well, babies seemed to be a sort of 'demo' version of human beings, and I had a photo where the hands of the person who was holding the baby appeared to be the baby's hands. The back cover motif of a burnt match continued for a surprising number of issues – right up to Proof, I think. At that time, I thought I got pretty acceptable results from scanning in a pencil drawing and ramping up the contrast. Everybody's gotta start somewhere.