Great news, Tooky's Mag is growing! We’ve got red hot metrics to share, studly new contributors to ogle, podcasts to hear, and new books to read. All that and more in today’s Letter from the Editor.
Enjoy!
Hey, it's still us. Sorry to make you scroll down. A few quick updates from me, the royal we, behind Tooky’s Mag. We had our six month anniversary a few weeks back and just HAD to share these key growth metrics with you, our long-suffering readership. The quantitative particulars will no doubt be both edifying and relevant to your own life:
Over 50 thousand confirmed passing glances over our deep-stealth shill squad's posts on Twitter, Reddit, BookTok, and 4chan
Inspired 15 tepid chuckles (¼ originating outside of Tooky’s staff)
2.5 thousand confirmed Half-A presses on links
Outgassed a bovinous 320 liters of uncaptured brainfarts per day
A gibbering amorphous mass of new subscribers. This is confirmation that you made the socially optimized decision to join us.
Added an uncensorable web domain, currently a redirect, courtesy of Tooky's head of web development, Zeke
To all of this we can only say, THANK YOU! Your succulent brainwaves, words of support, genuine recommendations of us on neutral 3rd party platforms, and just plain old attention means more to us than mere words can convey (without creeping you out).
Stay tuned for our next Letter from the Editor, which will feature 999 Substack growth tips! But for now we move on to the more pressing business of…
NEW STUFF
We’ve started a podcast — wait, please don’t go, we’re not going to make you listen to it! But we’re expanding our book reviews into a longform book club podcast which you can follow on YOUTUBE, APPLE PODCAST, and SPOTIFY (episodes will not generally be posted here).
Check it out! We're currently working on Marty Phillips' Millennium, and have our sights set on a launch month review of Passage Prize 2, along with a slew of other recent releases.
Kudos to the daring members of the Tooky’s Editorial Board for taking the initiative to get this project off the ground — specifically David, Cap, Gabe, Miles, and our tireless graphic designer, Aaron Ojibwe.
Our mission with this podcast series is to contribute to a living culture of our time which (much like a living religion) can only be manifested by direct experience and conversation about the budding alternative fiction scene from a reader's perspective. We promise to hold no punches, butter no butts, and leave no bridge unburned.
FUTURE ARTICLES
Fear not prose purists, our written articles will continue at the same pace and with the same aim at delivering focused essays and short fiction on the plight of the dreaded modern (that means you).
Coming up, we have the tale of a college wedding party gone wrong, a reply to reader questions on Petroleum Culture, and two guest contributor submissions (one from a familiar name, one from someone with no name at all!). All this and more waits in the wings, and we would happy accept more!
If you’re interested in the kinds of topics we cover here then please don’t be shy! It’s as simple as submitting at: tookysmag@gmail.com
Our suggested guidelines:
Title your email “SUBMISSION: SUBMISSION TITLE”
Target length 1-3k words, preferably in .docx or .doc format
Essays should have a single, clear point (but ideally not be explicitly stated in sentence 1 in that a 5 paragraph format American Education has bequeathed upon us) and be written in language approachable to a typical college undergrad
Fiction should be nuanced, heartfelt, and not blunt political allegory
Be prepared for accepted submissions to go through a two phase revision and polish process with an editor
Payment options include back slaps, paraphrased family recipes, and TOO 0.00%↑ KY airdrops (only available on PulseChain). We do hope you consider it, and thank you again for your support!
Nice!