Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

OK, first of all, I'm finally outing all the authors for the BME writer search (although they won't be on the articles until later today). They really all did a wonderful job, and any of them could have done good work for BME, but there's only so much work I can offer unfortunately so I have my tough call to make. It's possible that those who didn't make it will consider a position over at Modified Mind, an excellent sistersite to BME run by Crow — he's also looking for writers, so drop him a line if you're interested (although to avoid confusion, it's not a paid position over there).

Anyway, I'd live to begin with some commentary on the different articles so you can understand where my thinking is (don't worry, I won't be yelling “now get the hell out of my office” at the end) and how I'm making the decision. I'll go through them in the order they were posted.

Lord of the Blade was written by Volatile. For those of you who don't know Matt, he's already an experienced and talented writer, but up until now his work has been in the academic sphere more so than the “pop culture” writing that's required for BME, so when we went into this we knew he was going to have to stretch himself a little. I loved his introduction (and largely agreed with it), and I think he did a good job (as did Ryan) in detailing the procedure well enough for artists to learn from, but not so far as to make it a dangerous “how to” for amateurs. Good choice of pictures as well. It's a little dry I think, but for a first time I thought it was excellent, and very little editing was required on my end.

LuvPain99: Well, it was quite a year was written by serpents. I liked the subject matter and all the people involved, but I feel this was a little rough around the edges and didn't get in as deep as I'd have liked and some subjects that I'd hoped to see were skipped over — and I'm not sure that the picture decisions clearly illustrated the text. That said, Matt wrote me to let me know that part of that was his fault because things ended up getting pushed very late on his end. It took a little more editing than I'd have liked as well. To be honest, I'm not sure I could do a great short interview with Matt either — he's got such a rich and complex story that he needs a book! So that was taken into consideration as well.

Vegan Body Art was written by x k x. I liked it of course, and obviously the writer has a great grasp on vegan issues and I think introduced them well. However, I thought a little too much focus was on the vegan aspect and a little too little was on the interviews and the mod side of things — while things like vegan tattoo ink issues were raised in the introduction, they weren't mentioned in the interviews — I'd have hoped they'd have been more in depth, and maybe a little more tailored to each individual. I also was disappointed that the author didn't follow up some of the leads I'd provided on people with vegan tattoos who were no longer vegan, or even maybe interjected a meat-eater tattoo into the mix as a counterpoint.

The Salaryman's View: BME/Japan was, as many people guessed, written by bizarroboy. Initially I had chosen to not publish this, but Ferg insisted that I was underestimating the readers. As far as I can tell it's an accurate characterization of the salaryman's view of this growing scene in Japan, and far more of the hallucinatory passages hint at Dita's story than I think most readers guessed, although I believe that unless you already know her story that might not be appreciated. My take on this is piece is that it's uniquely and brilliantly written, but too abstract for most people to regularly be able to absorb, and it did not really give me an insight into the author's ability to write a traditional interview. Check out Ferg's page for great travel writing and pictures by the way.

Rites of Passage Suspension Family was written by Uberkitty, an absolutely top-rated experience author whose work is regularly featured. However, this was given to me at the last minute, and without any editing or images (not that I asked for images, so I sort of treated that as a “bonus” for the people who did), and I kind of feel like it was rushed and not really “complete”… While the core was solid, I think a lot was missed (such as Frank's page — info on RI SusCon 2005 — or even talking to some of the amazing women in ROP). I think in the end it did turn out wonderfully, but it took more work on my end to get it print-ready than I wanted. I thought it unfortunate that there was no introduction or commentary as well, and no follow-up with the interviewees. That said, combining three separate interviews to read as a single one is trickier than you'd think.

Mothers with Mods was written by typealice. It came in perfectly edited, so I didn't have to do much work there, although I had to do the pictures (but like I said, I didn't ask for that). I thought there were a few places that should have been explored in more depth, but what's most interesting to me about this article is that while IAM readers on the whole liked it (but weren't raving about it or anything), it was very popular with general BME readers, and the only article that I saw getting positive offsite reviews. It seems this author is able to talk to a different audience than I am, although they're not as “hard hitting” as I'd like. But I'm probably into hitting harder than most people like!

RTFM: Keith Alexander was “written” (it was an audio interview) by snackninja (pictures chosen by me again). I think this is a great interview, and Keith's glowing recommendation means a lot as well. However, there were a few glaring errors in it and a few style things that should have been edited out — it's a complete transcript of a phone interview, which also only gives me so much insight into the wrier's abilities since the two methods are somewhat different (that was Keith's decision though, not Jordan's). Good pre-interview research appeared to be done as well.

(The was actually one other author in the final set — a total of four men and four women, with two from the UK, three from Canada, and three from America — but they dropped out of the running unfortunately.)

What's my decision?

As I said, I really believe all of these people could do a great job. The issues that I've raised above could all be easily corrected over the first few articles — it is as much internship as job after all. I really have to emphasize this — the critiques I've brought up are all correctable, and I have a great deal of respect for all of these people both as writers, as people (that was a lot of how I chose initial finalists), and of course for surviving what I'm sure must have been an incredibly stressful application period. They all deserve thanks and congratulations.

Now, I know this is going to irritate some people, but I have not yet made an absolutely final decision… but I have narrowed it down to three, of which I will probably hire two people. The job will start in March when I return from filimg in Africa (what?!? well, that's a story for another day, monster fans)

The “final three” are , and .   (highlight the text to see)

The final-final decision will be posted on Wednesday, if not sooner.