Jest
This summer as I was checking my email and mindlessly deleting the spam messages, I very nearly got rid of a note from Jest magazine. I didn’t recognize the sender’s name and I had forgotten all about Jest. Several months earlier I had learned about the humor magazine and, ever vigilant about new places to market my stories, I sent them a query email in which I pitched a couple of ideas. I also pointed them to my blog so they could see some examples of my writing. Then I heard nothing. Until this email.
The email seemed form-like, asking me for my home address, telephone number, and other bits of personal information. Okay, I thought, now Jest is marketing me. This is a print magazine, so I figured they were trying to sell me a subscription.
Being a natural cynic, I fired back a response to this email with the original message attached. One word: “Why?” Why did they need this information?
I got an email back from the staff at Jest that said: “We need the information so that we can send you your check.”
Puzzled, I wrote back again. This time two words: “What check?”
I received yet another email with this answer: “For the piece that we published in the latest edition of Jest.”
Uhm: “What piece?” <Send>
Apparently, in looking over my blog, they liked one of my poems and decided to publish it – without telling me! Normally, I would be a bit peeved by this presumptuousness, but, hey, this was a New York magazine publishing my work and paying me. Hard to knock that scenario.
In fact, I was so pleased by this bit of news and so curious about how they would lay-out my poem that I decided to subscribe to the magazine anyway. The irony here is that the amount of my paycheck for the poem was exactly the cost of a year’s subscription to Jest. So, basically, I was even-steven. Even-steven minus $2.50 for shipping and handling.
Since all that email imbroglio, I have been receiving regular correspondence from Jest. I am now part of their “stable” of writers. The magazine is currently distributed in stores only in New York City and has a small mail order subscription base. But publisher, David Fenton, and editor, Jim Mendrinos, have big plans for Jest. They are set to expand the magazine base, revamp their web page with fresh content every day and find advertising money to pay for it all. Their ultimate goal is to make Jest the humor magazine in America. A lofty goal at that.
There was a writer’s meeting at the Jest offices in New York City this week. A meet and greet sort of thing. Despite the costs and time involved in getting up to New York, I decided to go. There is no substitute for face-to-face contact when you are trying to make an early impression with someone. So I hopped a train from Washington. (Now I am even-steven minus shipping and handling and train fare).
The meeting was at 6:30pm. I arrived in New York around 1:30 and walked around the city for a few hours (jotting down page after page of notes on funny things I had seen – what is it about this place?).
Jest editor Jim Mendrinos led the meeting. He is an accomplished writer and stand-up comedian with a powerful voice and an evangelical way about him. The cramped office space at Jest was butt-to-butt with writers: sitting, standing, leaning. I’d say twenty or so in all. Everyone listened intently, asked questions, offered some advice. It was an awfully serious forum for a bunch of humor writers. After the meeting, people mingled around to network a bit and pitch story ideas. I pitched one and got the go ahead to write it.
It’s exciting to be involved in this adventure, developing as it is from the ground up. I have no idea where it will lead, if anywhere. But it’s the ride that matters, is it not? And this one started on the Amtrak train.
(I have added the Jest web site to my links. It’s not much to behold at the moment, but I’m told that changes are already in the works. You’ll certainly be hearing about them here.)
10:23:42 PM 
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