Checking In With Thunderclap

Thunderclap is great. They have a Group going at Fictionaut. We are happy.

Q (Nicolle Elizabeth): Amanda! How goes it, sis? You have a Thunderclap Group going here at Fictionaut. How is the group working out and what is Thunderclap and how are the two related? Tell us everything. Be a thunderstorm.

A (Amanda Deo): BOOM! Okay. Thunderstorm coming. It’s going very well, thank you! I was invited to Fictionaut by a poet I published, Parker Tettleton, who suggested that Fictionaut is a fantastic way to rope in writers to the press. I signed up, took a look at the site, bowed down (“we’re not worthy!”) to it’s functionality and design, and knew that it would help draw readers and writers into Thunderclap. One of my favorite things about Fictionaut is the easy and appealing way it organizes the work of writers on its site. It also allows some of the folks that have become Thunderclap fans to point their friends or other writers they know to my group.

You’ve also recently started a press. How is this different from publishing a journal. Any words of advice?

I wanted to start a press so that I could branch out with chapbooks and my bi-monthly magazine. Putting together a zine is awesome, but I’m so interested in single collections of work I wanted to make sure I branded those amazing collections somehow. I want Thunderclap, the word, to be an identifier for writing that I think should be read by others. Both a press and a journal take a lot of work, esp. on a low to non-existent budget. It can be hard to attract writers when there is no payment involved. But I find that there are still so many writers out there that are dying to be published in any way they can. As far as advice goes, I suppose my biggest piece of it would be that the time a press can take up in your life, from the editing, the design, the production, etc. can be more than any editor thinks. I have a full time job so it does get tough to find time to work on it but I really try hard because I know I’m accomplishing something for people that is greater that I can probably understand.

Internet or in-print publishing, give us your pros and cons on each.

Ah! I really love both. I started working on a zine in 2003 and a lot has changed in a mere 7 years. There are tons of better software programs out there now to accommodate the needs of the technology/design challenged like myself. The pro of the internet is your audience is infinite. The con of the internet is that because your audience is infinite, it is often too large and your work can get lost out there in space. The pro of in-print is that your readers have something they can stain with their greasy fingers. They can spill coffee on it and years later remind themselves of that coffee stain. It is the traditional, the authentic. The con of in-print is that the expenses of putting a decent production together can be more than small houses, such as myself, can really manage. You really have to scrap your pennies unless you are the CEO of Random House.

Where do you see Thunderclap and Thunderclap press in ten years?

No one has asked me that question yet. I was scared to be asked this question. I’m not much of a planner. I’m willing to keep on with Thunderclap for as long as I can keep up with it and people are interested in hearing from us Generation Y’ers.

Please tell us about you, your projects, your work, anything you’d like us to know. Strut it.

I’m just a lumberjack lovin’, plaid shirt wearing, beer drinking Canadian who moved to the US for love. When I got married in 2007, I felt a huge void from my prior writing scene in Ottawa, Ontario. So Thunderclap is as much helping me and it is actually helping my marriage. I just released a special edition of Thunderclap! Magazine which is entitled Femme Fatale. I wanted to showcase approx. 40 female writers, including myself, in one collection just so that I made it clear that female writers rock. /end strut

Nicolle Elizabeth checks in with Fictionaut Groups every Friday.