Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Great Ocean Quarterly is Alive.


Another long break from posting but the excuse has been hinted at in many previous entries.

Yesterday we finally sent the first edition of Great Ocean Quarterly to the printers, with it hitting the news stands, and off to subscribers, in two weeks.

It has been a massive effort, I've never been so tired and worked such long hours for such an extended period. The result is a beautiful magazine that we aim to make better and better as we learn, grow, and our community grows with it. Our contributors include the work of Jon Frank, Rod Hyett, Jack Finlay, Dean Gorrisen, Rebecca Olive, Gregory Day, Favel Parrett and Dan Crockett, of KOOK magazine fame, with one of my favourite poems ever.

The other day Mark, Jock and I sent out our first electronic direct mail to our list of family and friends to get our first burst of subscriptions. They are starting to roll in, and we are in the throws of getting our international subs coding done so that any of you far away can join in the fun. 

If you'd like a copy, drop me a line at safetosea@gmail.com and I'll send it to you too.

We are now looking for contributors, naturally, so if you are a creative person of any description please get in touch. We have a desire for top quality writing, and will pay!

Just remember it is not a surfing magazine. 

My premise is the 'sea affected life'. Put simply if you have a coastline near you , be it ocean, lake or puddle, and it means something to you, then GOQ will work for you, and your work will work for GOQ.

That being said as all three of us are surfers there will creep in that love of ours from issue to issue. It is simply not the centre though the love of the briny is definitely keeping our hearts pumping.

Our next challenge is to build our website so expect that to be populated by more and more very quickly. I just have to get my head around the Wordpress interface... The poor brain is a bit fried at the moment and even typing this is a challenge.

To finish off, and just to emphasise how much dedication has been put to this project, this has been one of the most relentless winters for surf ever, weeks of off-shores and swell after swell, and I've had not much of it at all… 

Below some grabs from GOQ as a taste, with more to come.

If you already have the yen to subscribe, you can get to our page here, and keep visiting the website as it grows and grows.