Fare thee well, Pindeldyboz
The news arrived in my inbox this morning that Pindeldyboz, one of the pioneers of on-line fiction publishing, is shutting down after a 10 year run. Executive editor Whitney Pastorek explains:
10 years is a good solid run — centuries in internet time — and I could not be prouder of what we’ve accomplished. I know that I would literally not have my current job were it not for Pboz; I would not have many of my current friends. I also know there are lots of younger journals out there tearing it up, carrying the torch of online fiction into the future, ensuring that the written word will forever thrive beyond the boundaries of 140-character chirps. We’re basically Grandpa. It’s time to get out of the way and let the hungry kidz have it.
A decade is a century in Internet time, yet somehow Pindeldyboz stayed fresh, fun, and relevant during all that time. Along with sites like Small Spiral Notebook, Eyeshot, and storySouth, Pindeldyboz helped to set the tone for the new venue of online literary journals. They started at a time when most short fiction and poetry was published in small print journals, and they’re going out at the dawn of the e-book era. Not quite cave-painting-to-Gutenberg, but still a huge shift in how stories are published and read.
Over those years, Pindeldyboz rejected a few of my stories (very kindly and constructively: I appreciated their critiques, which helped get the stories into shape for other publishers), and ran my story Self Defense, which made the Notable list for the Million Writers Award in 2005. One of their editors, Shauna McKenna, even showed up for my reading of “Call Me Pearl” for Ballyhoo Stories. They were, like most of the online publishing world, good and dedicated people who put a huge amount of time and personal expense into a project with little worldly reward out of love for stories and words.
I’m sorry to see Pindeldyboz go dark, but I’m glad they’re going out with class and good humor, and I’m thankful for the work they did over the past decade. Make sure you browse their current stories and dig into the archives before they disappear; there’s a lot of great stuff to read there.
