Some years ago I had the brainwave of putting together a magazine of short stories covering a wide range of popular genres. Each one was to be accompanied by at least two illustrations, and I also wanted to include one or two comic strip tales. Everything was to be written and drawn by contributors. And I would edit...
The mag's content was to be light, short, hopefully entertaining, the sort of thing you could take on holiday to the beach, or pick up for a quick read after dinner in the evening. Something for a pretty broad reading audience who wouldn't mind flitting from one genre to another. A bit of fun, no expectations beyond a good read, no "cutting edge", maybe something adults might like, but not confronting, discomforting, nor in-your-face.
For a host of reasons, by late 2009 it had taken almost three years to put a sample, not-for-sale edition together. Well, the general reaction to the mag was that there wasn't much reaction, except that some people seemed to loathe it, and told me so.
The plan had been that perhaps with some support and even interest from a potential publishing partner (excuse the alliteration), I might be able to expand the mag to double the number of pages, adding a wider range of stories, more illustrations and at least another comic strip adventure. And get a decent page designer - not myself again! - to make the cover.
But by this time I felt somewhat down about it, daunted by the prospect of fronting another two or three years of building it into a full-sized for-sale edition. I decided not to continue with it.
Now, I've decided to display the sample version on this website, in the "Archived" section. Click/tap on the pic at the top of this page, and a PDF of the mag will open in a new page - I hope you like it! Note that some of the editorial details in the mag are now outdated.
My thanks to all the writers and illustrators who contributed to the sample edition of Popular Stories Illustrated. Copyright © of stories and illustrations remains with the respective contributors. Copyright © of the anthology and magazine titled Popular Stories Illustrated remains with myself, Roger Stitson.
1 November, 2015