Spotlight on The Deadlands and Psychopomp
Tell us about your magazine, The Deadlands. When was it founded, and who’s on the publishing team?
The Deadlands is spec-fic/literary zine all about death. It launched in May 2021. In late 2020 I (Sean Markey) brought the idea to E. Catherine Tobler (Elise), whom I knew from when she was the editor in chief of Shimmer, which had closed down a few years before. The publisher of Shimmer, Beth Wodzinski, is my wife, and I helped here and there with Shimmer since 2007.
I reached out to Elise and said, ‘‘Hey, want to edit a death magazine?’’ Long story short, she did, and we were off. It was actually Elise that came up with the name The Deadlands. She has been right there since the magazine’s inception, and is the most important person on the team, as she runs everything. Shout out to Elise, our editor-in-chief, she is THE BEST.
Our team includes Nicasio Reed as poetry editor, David Gilmore as nonfiction editor, inkshark as art director, Laura Blackwell as editor, Amanda Downum as resident Necromancer (mortician, author of our Ask A Necromancer column), Christine Scott does our layout, Jo Stewart is our proofreader, Felicia Martinez helps with our social media, and Shana DuBois helps with shipping and other administrative tasks.
The Deadlands is focused on stories about death… but it’s not as grim as that sounds. Tell us more about your mission.
A common misconception is that we’re a horror magazine publishing stories and poems about DYING and MURDER, but that is extremely not true. We publish stories about grief, about how death impacts the living, what death might be like, and who we might meet there. We explore ideas and concepts of the afterlife. Our author’s are inspired by the death myths humans have been telling each other for thousands of years.
It’s a really universal thing that everybody has some level of experience with. I hope that reading the stories we publish in The Deadlands helps to confront, to conceive of, and process the idea of death. It has helped me a little and I hope others feel the same.
What inspired you to begin the magazine?
I’d spent several years in the mid aughts writing short fiction, but never really found my footing as a writer. I got some exposure to publishing from helping Beth, and was generally impressed with everyone that started and ran their own magazine. Though I started my career as an elementary school teacher, I fell in love with marketing, doing SEO, and building websites. I loved the idea of using these skills to build a platform that other artists could use to show their amazing work to the world.
I’ve wanted to be a book publisher for a long time, but I had zero experience and it felt like not the best place to start. So I narrowed my focus to publishing a magazine to learn about the industry, get some real experience publishing things, and hopefully make a bit of a name for myself as someone who does great work.
I chose the subject of a magazine relating to death for several reasons. The biggest is that ever since I was a kid, I’ve just thought a lot about death. It was this huge, overwhelming concept that literally would keep me up at night, and I never talked to anyone about it, just kept it all inside my head. I found a lot comfort in books, especially reading about this topic and the idea of some kind of Beyond. When I was in high school I started reading The Gunslinger by Stephen King (and the next three books in the series, which was all that had been published at that time). It stole all of my attention and really captured my imagination. It was about death in that it was the story of what’s at the end of everything – I couldn’t get enough. Through those novels I also discovered T.S. Eliot and his poem ‘‘The Hollow Men’’. The imagery in that poem really lit my brain on fire and stayed with me. That’s actually where the name of the magazine comes from. I told Elise I was extremely inspired by the vibes in ‘‘The Hollow Men’’ and she pulled the name from the poem.
Where should new readers start? Are there particular stories or issues you’d like to highlight?
I actually made a page where readers who are interested can request a sample issue of The Deadlands. There’s an epub to download, or, if so inclined, you can grab a free print issue (only pay the cost of shipping). Just go here: <thedeadlands.com/locus>. Every single issue we’ve published is available on our site to read for free.
We’ve had the pleasure of publishing so many amazing writers. Here are a few that Locus readers are probably familiar with: Vajra Chandrasekera, Premee Mohamed, Alix Harrow, Fran Wilde, Josh Rountree, A.C. Wise, Sarah Pinsker, and Ai Jiang (among many other great writers).
What trends are you seeing in short fiction? What trends would you like to see?
One thing we’ve seen lately is writers revisiting genre roots with modern takes. I would personally like to see more necromancer stories. Let’s see some real unique takes on death magic. I’m also way into time travel, multiverse, and personifying things that aren’t usually personified. Make any of those about death and that’s a sweet spot. I really love it when writers push the limits and get experimental with their writing. As long as it relates to death, I’d love to see more of that. Oh, and more sci-fi focused death stories. I love sci-fi and we don’t see a ton of it. Send me your science fantasy death stories!
You also run book publisher Psychopomp. Tell us what you’ve been up to there.
After publishing The Deadlands for a few years, I launched Psychopomp in January 2023. I acquired the domain Psychopomp.com to be the home for all of my grand publishing plans. .
Our first book was novella A Voice Calling from Christopher Barzak, one of my favorite writers, out in March 2024. Elise helped immensely with getting Psychopomp off the ground, and has been the editor of all the novellas, which also include Lovely Creatures by KT Bryski and From These Dark Abodes by Lyndsie Manusos, released in September. We’ve published three novelettes on our site by Aimee Ogden, Eugenia Triantafyllou, and Shingai Njeri Kagunda, and a brilliant story by Premee Mohamed.
What can readers do to help support your efforts?
The Deadlands has a Patreon where, for $2/month you get the epub edition of our quarterly zine, and for $5/month you get the print issue (US shipping only). We are really so grateful for these supporters, as without we couldn’t keep publishing this little death zine. You can find our Patreon at <thedeadlands.com/patreon>.
For Psychopomp: We’re a publisher, please buy our books! We have print and epub available. This October we are doing our annual fund drive, where we create a unique Coin For The Ferryman that people can collect as a way to support us. You can find out more info on our site Psychopomp.com.
Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know? Upcoming work or other projects of note?
The Deadlands has a new issue in October with work from Vivian Shaw, Nwuguru Chidiebere Sullivan, Soni Brown, Lavie Tidhar, Nat Nguyen, and more.
Psychopomp is publishing a mini collection by Premee Mohamed, One Message Remains. We just acquired novellas by Aimee Ogden, Josh Rountree, Bernie Jean Schiebeling, Amal Singh, K.L. Schroder, and Thomas Ha. We’ll be publishing novelettes by Premee, Natalia Theodoridou, and Erin Brown. Really exciting times ahead for readers whwo love deathy, otherwordly fiction.
–Sean Markey
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