Smith’s Monthly is/was a crazy cool concept by Dean Wesley Smith. It was a literary magazine (currently on hiatus) that was filled with short stories, poems, non-fiction essays, and novels (one per issue) every month by one writer. 70-85k words of fiction published every month…it made to something like 40 issues. And it may pick up again.
I knew nothing of Dean or this magazine when it launched in the fall of 2013, but I became intrigued by it after I discovered Dean’s blog. I like the pulp mindset of production, and this seemed like the pulps resurrected. So, I recently ordered #1.
It is exactly like advertised. A handful of short stories, a couple of starts of serials, an essay of first tee jitters (golf), some poems, and an entire Post-Apocalyptic Romance novel. I enjoyed the shorts a lot, which is saying something because I generally prefer reading longer fiction. The golf essay was humorous, if only because I felt like I was laughing at myself. The novel wasn’t my “thing”, but was well written and I believe someone who likes their genre-romance hybrids to tilt more to the romance side would like this a lot more than I did. I liked it, just wasn’t necessarily in my reading ‘wheelhouse.’
The beauty of Smith’s Monthly is that there is a ton of (mostly) new fiction and it touches on every imaginable genre. I find that admirable as both a reader and writer. I look forward to continuing my way through the issues. That’s a lot of reading ahead.
Tony D. Writes Pulp Fiction 