Crime Factory magazine goes POD, plans Kung Fu issue

I’ve said it before and likely will again, but now is a great time to be a reader and writer of crime fiction. Seemingly every day a new short story appears somewhere online, and the sheer wealth of stories available means never being at a loss for something to read.

Taking nothing away from those web sites (or their tireless editors), sometimes you still want the traditional experience of reading words on paper. In the last year or so, new publications have emerged to scratch that itch. Needle, debuting earlier this year with a journal format, offers nothing but short fiction. Crime Factory, which began as an online, PDF or Kindle publication, launched a print-on-demand version with its most recent, fifth issue. It offers short fiction as well as an impressive array of non-fiction that often puts the fiction in a larger context thanks to some insightful analysis from the contributing writers.

With that big leap forward for Crime Factory, as well as word that the next issue will be the special stand-alone Kung-Fu Factory, I thought it was time to check in with Cameron Ashley, one of the editors, to find out what’s going on over there. Cam was gracious enough to pound this out seemingly minutes after touching down after a trip Stateside for NoirCon and other stops.

TIRBD: Now that you have five issues under your collective belt, how has Crimefactory evolved when compared with your initial intentions?

CA: Hmm. It pretty much is exactly what we intended. My internal editorial filter is to try and do what Dave Honeybone would like and what Dave Honeybone would have wanted to do if he had the freedom we do now. I guess the rapid growth has been the main unexpected thing and that has led us to go, “Fucking hell. People actually read it; we’d better do it properly.” Took us quite a time to find our feet and staying on top of fiction subs is a problem, but generally people have been pretty patient. And they really have to be, I’m sorry to say. We only have so much space per issue for fiction. Hopefully the content their stories eventually rubs shoulders with eases the pain of the lateness… um, so yeah, our intention was always to try and do what we thought was cool (fiction or non) in a lo-fi way that we can say is punk, but is actually there because we have no idea what we are doing. That was basically our philosophy: the sheen of great content hiding design and editorial ineptitude.

How much more work has it been than you anticipated?

Oh, I knew it was going to be a lot of work. Dave Honeybone told me, “It will take over your life.” It hasn’t got that bad yet, but yeah, the three of us work pretty hard and my own writing has suffered slightly as a result, but that’s cool, I just need to work harder. Honestly though, the people we surround ourselves with make the process pretty easy. Our “staffers” are awesome and guys like my mate Jimmy Callaway are always there to lend a hand. Having just come back from both Bouchercon and Noircon, I can assure you that the crime writing community is filled with some of the nicest, most helpful, ego-free people I have literally ever met. If we need help, all we need to do is ask. I am blown away by how cool everybody is. Getting back to the question, Liam basically taught himself In Design as we were working on the first issue, but I’m sure even he would say that the workload is not quite as bad as you may think. We love doing it too, which helps.

A lot of crime fiction magazines and web sites have come and gone over the years. Did you take any lessons from those? Why has your lasted and thrived where some others have not?
Well, it’s only been a year since the relaunch, so it would be a bit unfair of me to compare. As far as “lessons,” well not many! I suppose our initial PDF format came about due to my friends bitching at me that they hated reading my stories online as it strained their delicate eyes. My dear friend Marcia would actually try and copy and paste my stuff and print it out at work. That seemed to me to be a cool idea, straddling the bridge between e-zine and print and maintaining some kind of link to volume 1 of CF, which was exclusively print. If you could call it “thriving,” I guess it’s because Keith, Liam and I are enthusiastic bastards and we try and surround oursleves with other people of equal enthusiasm in the hopes that we will form some kind of perpetual motion idea machine. So far, so good. Also, we try to remove the possibility of boredom by enjoying the freedom of the format and by getting drunk and coming up with whacky shit like KUNG-FU FACTORY, which has turned out to be perhaps the most anticipated project we’ve done so far.

How does an issue come together? Is that process easier now that you have a track record, or is what must surely be a flood of submissions making it more difficult (it ultimately more rewarding)?

It really varies issue by issue. We occasionally bump things up or down either because we need to or because a piece is a better fit elsewhere. Fiction-wise it’s now pretty easy as we have a backlog of stories waiting and we can mix and match them to create (hopefully) a pretty diverse and interesting batch of stories each issue. Non-fiction has been a bit of a headache. It’s actually pretty mind-boggling the lack of good non-fiction we get. It’s actually weird. Nobody seems to want to write it. It’s something I’m unwilling to budge on either – I am not ruling out all-fiction issues occasionally – but CF was founded as a magazine. If you don’t want to read the articles and interviews and you want to write fiction, you’re doing yourself a disservice and I really do think a lot of story writers just want to see their name in print and don’t give a fuck about anything else, which demonstrates a lack of true authenticity in my book. Getting back onto the topic, Nerd of Noir is rock-solid and turns his shit in way ahead of deadlines, and the addition of Melbourne’s own Andrew Nette has been an utter blessing. These guys get it. And the non-fiction we’ve thus far run (and have coming up) I’m really happy with, so I should just stop whining.

You offered a printed version of the magazine as an option for the first time with this issue. Is that a change in philosophy, or did the stars finally align?

No philosophy change at all. We just realised that it was pretty easy to do (apart from the re-formatting headaches), so why not do it? We want to be able to pay contributors one day, so it’s also another revenue stream and, having seen Steve Weddle’s copy recently, it looks pretty cool. Further formatting tweaks await us, but basically it’s just a natural progression. My hope was always that people would print PDF issues off and read them at home (Adrian McKinty reads his in the bath which is perfect) and this is taking that to another level. Plus, people kept asking us and we saw that Steve and the NEEDLE crew were doing it, and rocking it, so why not? However you want to read it, we will try to accommodate you.

What will the future hold for Crimefactory?

Basically to continue to do the best job we can and put out as much cool, interesting stuff as possible and catch more mistakes. KUNG-FU FACTORY is coming up – which has exceeded my pretty high hopes for content – and CF #6 has some dynamite content lined up, so the immediate future looks pretty good. Plus, we have a new cover artist as of next issue which I’m really excited about (more on this later), so the mag will look better than ever, or perhaps just good depending on your point of view. The CF anthology from New Pulp Press is also on the horizon. We need to line-edit and then we’re good to go. It’s a crazy, crazy line-up and will be a helluva read. More themed issues like KFF if time permits and the implementation of a really cool true crime feature featuring rotating writers. I’m really excited about that as I fucking hate most true crime as it’s just exploitative trash, and I’ve wrestled with the possibilities of including it somehow in CF. The way we’re going to do it is perfect for us and some people I’ve worded up to write for it are just as excited.