About Way Out West

Way Out West, the magazine, started out as a letter to amuse a friend convalescing in a body cast. Once a month I'd send him an envelope filled with cartoons, jokes and amusing stories. At the same time, I was using this monthly project to learn how to use the desktop publishing software on my computer. I started making the letter look more like a magazine. My friend loved it. He showed it to his friends, they made copies and showed it to their friends. It became more popular and I got more and more requests to be added to the mailing list. It got to the point where I was publishing and mailing hundreds every month - for free! Each issue had a different masthead and had an original artwork cover, inside there was fiction, poetry, opinion pieces, jokes and each issue had an installment of the serial fiction 'Venus & Mars'. There was spot art created for some of the articles, and some issues had an entire page of cartoons. I did all the artwork, writing and design every month. What started out as a labor of love became a part-time job - that I didn't get paid for. Still, I enjoyed creating it and I relished the complete freedom to do as I pleased. Single-handedly, I published Way Out West for a little over three years before I couldn't keep up with it anymore. The demands of my day-job and other factors made it impossible for me to put out the magazine on a monthly basis. I reluctantly retired the project.

Way Out West now comes on-line. I'm re-publishing what you might call the "greatest hits" from the three years of the magazine's content. I'm hoping this will give me a head start on writing new material.

W.O.W Home page

E-mail: mscherer@tesserak.net

Way Out West copyright 1993 Martin Scherer. Venus & Mars copyright 1995 Martin Scherer.