This week I got to speak with P. Alexander. Alexander is the owner of Cirsova Publishing, a publishing company for independent fantasy and science fiction. It is the “Magazine of Thrilling Adventure and Daring Suspense!” I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as we did!
An Interview With P. Alexander
Aaron Iara: Thank you for taking the time to speak with me this week. Please tell the readers a bit about yourself and the work you do.
P. Alexander: Thank you for having me! I’m P. Alexander–I’m the owner of Cirsova Publishing and the editor of its flagship publication, Cirsova Magazine of Thrilling Adventure and Daring Suspense.
We’ve been operating since 2016 and have put out thirteen issues and a handful of side publications, namely Duel Visions, an anthology of weird and macabre fiction from Misha Burnett and Louise Sorensen, Michael Tierney’s Wild Stars space opera novels and comics and a fully illustrated 70th Anniversary Edition of Leigh Brackett’s Planet Stories-era Eric John Stark novellas.
In 2017, our magazine was a Hugo Award Finalist for Best Semi-Pro Zine. In the spring of 2019, we published Young Tarzan and the Mysterious She a previously “lost” Jungle Tales-era Tarzan story by Edgar Rice Burroughs, posthumously completed by Michael Tierney.
Aaron Iara: Cirsova Publishing sounds like a great concept to bring awareness to independent creators. What drew your interest to production and publishing?
P. Alexander: Cirsova actually originally started as an OSR gaming blog. One of our friends, Jeffro Johnson, had been doing a deep dive on the classic sci-fi and fantasy fiction included in the sources and inspiration material of the original Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide. I’d been following along some, and getting into more and more classic adventure SFF.
During some of the hubbub within the sci-fi community around the mid-2010s, I found myself wondering at how difficult it seemed to find the kind of fiction I’d been reading in the pulps—I figured that it must still be out there and people must still be writing it; it was just a matter of making a somewhat respectably paying outfit to draw in authors and their stories.
There was really a confluence of three major things that led to starting Cirsova Publishing:
- I had the desire to revive the sort of high octane adventure fiction found in magazines like Planet Stories, Argosy, Weird Tales, and pre-Campbell Astounding.
- I had a story idea I’d used to troll a friend with a fake review; I eventually actually wrote that story and starting a magazine seemed like it would be more fun than sending it out to slush piles.
- I’d recently read Foucault’s Pendulum, and aside from the prospect of being murdered by lunatic occultist nerds, it made it seem like it would be fun to get into small publishing.
Aaron Iara: Time management is an issue for many independent creators. How do you balance your life, work, and other projects?
P. Alexander: It’s kind of a struggle sometimes. There are ups and downs in the workloads of all areas of life, so you just try to load-shift the best you’re able to accommodate what needs to get done.
Aaron Iara: What are your biggest obstacles when it comes to running the website/business? How do you overcome them?
P. Alexander: Growing an audience is probably one of the most challenging aspects. Everything you do competes for your time resources, so focus on one area can take away from another. Whether it’s blogging, YouTubing, or engaging on social media, it takes time and energy and they hit different audiences. We’ve ended up with a small and loyal core following, but to stay afloat, we’ll eventually need to grow substantially beyond it.
I wish I could say that I had the answers to folks who want to grow their audience and increase their footprint to the point where their creative endeavors reach a point of sustainability. But other than platitudes and “keep at it,” we don’t have much to give.
Aaron Iara: I agree that growing an audience is the most difficult aspect of online publishing. If it were easy, we would all be successful creators! The fact that there are many outlets for promotion can be burdensome as well.
What strategies do you use to maintain motivation in regard to Cirsova Publishing or any other goals in your life?
P. Alexander: If anything, Cirsova Publishing part of what keeps me going. But the large outpouring of fan support and friends we’ve made over the course of the last few years doing this is a big part of what makes this all worthwhile.
Aaron Iara: Running a website/business takes a lot of time and energy. What do you do to stay productive?
P. Alexander: It’s kind of tricky because social media can end up a huge time sink with no real discernible ROI. So, I try to at least accomplish at least one significant thing outside of social media every day. I’m not always able to juggle it, because the day job has to take priority.
Aaron Iara: I think that is a great approach. Social media doesn’t mean much if you don’t have great work backing it up. That is an issue that I see a lot of creators face. They want to focus their efforts on social media when they should be working on the craft they wanted to promote in the first place.
What is your approach to the creative process? Do you work at creativity, or do you wait for inspiration to strike?
P. Alexander: A little of both. Unfortunately, I probably lean more heavily towards inspiration striking, and it doesn’t always strike. Admittedly, I’ve been much less productive on the creative front than the business front.
I’ve published a book City at the Top of the World and a couple of my own short stories, but it’s been a couple of years since I’ve actually finished and published anything.
Aaron Iara: What advice can you give to both creators and publishers?
P. Alexander: There are more tools and resources for authors and publishers than ever before. What’s out there may not be perfect, and sometimes changes [like Amazon folding Createspace into KDP] aren’t always for the better, there has still never been a better time to get into publishing. Anyone with a finished book waiting for a golden ticket from tradpub is wasting valuable time that they could be spending getting their work out there and in front of readers.
Aaron Iara: Do you have any upcoming events or releases you would like to discuss?
P. Alexander: In March, we’ll be releasing our Spring issue. This one has some stuff we’re really excited about. I love Robert Zoltan’s Rogues of Merth series, which is sort of like Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd & Grey Mouser if the characters were actually lovable scum and not just scum, so I was thrilled when Robert offered us a shot at one of the next stories in the series.
Adrian Cole actually rebooted his 1970s Dream Lords series with a new sequence of stories that he’s published with us over the last couple of years—these, along with the new one we’ll be publishing in spring, will be included in a new fix-up novel that will be coming out along with an all-new edition of the original Dream Lords novels [these will be out through Pulp Hero Press].
We’ve also got a new Clock adventure from Michael Reyes, who’s really a rising star of weird fantasy horror.
We’ll be running sword & sorcery adventures from both Dave Ritzlin, who owns DMR Books [a pretty awesome heavy-metal fantasy publishing house], and Cynthia Ward, who runs Market Maven.
Plus, we’ll have the next Mongoose & Meerkat adventure in sequence from Jim Breyfogle, which is a perfect lead-in for our Mongoose & Meerkat Volume 1 anthology that we’ll be launching a Kickstarter for in April.
And that’s just Spring! We’re putting out five issues in 2020, so there’s a TON of great stuff we’ll have out there for fans of adventure and weird fiction.
Aaron Iara: Thank you for taking the time to speak with me this week! Please tell the readers where they can find you and Cirsova Publishing.
P. Alexander: Our website is www.cirsova.wordpress.com. All of our releases can be found on Amazon, and at Barnes & Noble [though probably not on the shelves]. For the truly brave, our twitter is @cirsova, but we’re there more for fun and bants and hijinks than the bog-standard shilling.
Check Out Cirsova Publishing
A huge thank you to P. Alexander for taking the time to speak with me this week! Make sure to check out Cirsova Publishing at the following locations:
Cirsova Publishing’s Official Website
Cirsova Publishing on Twitter
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