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What follows is an interview that Derick Varn conducted with r. c. cooper.

How long have you been writing and publishing fiction?

I started writing short stories awhile back, but after publishing one I made the mistake of moving on (prematurely) to novels. I returned to short stories about three years ago. Knowing nothing of internet venues, I shopped stories around to the well-known print magazines—Kenyon Review, Georgia Review, Iowa Review, Missouri Review…I received many nice (encouraging) notes, but no takers. Tough competition? No doubt, but I thought some of my stories were as good as what I was reading in these magazines. Subjective process? Yes, of course: above a certain quality threshold story selection becomes completely subjective—“does this piece sing to me?” The key: who is me? Then something occurred to me: most of my stories are offbeat and/or dark, and I asked myself what editor would accept them, no matter how well-written, for an audience thoroughly corrupted by political correctness? Answer: few to none. Feeling I had broken a code, I started sending my stories almost entirely to print independents (not college-affiliated). Bingo. Four stories were quickly taken. At about the same time, I discovered the internet zines and magazines, and quickly placed many stories with them.

Since you started what kind of trends have you noticed?

The “high quality” print market for short stories has shrunk, but the internet has come on like gangbusters. Apparently the internet started with personal sites and then zines, and then expanded to include high-quality literary journals. Some of the better print journals have opened sites—Mississippi Review and Boston Review come to mind, and I’m sure this trend will continue. In fact, I predict that in ten years virtually all of the prominent print journals will at the very least have an online component, and that many homegrown internet journals will be more than competitive with them (some already are). Here’s why: in his book Longitudes and Attitudes, NYT columnist Tom Friedman notes that while 1.5 million folks read the print NYT, nytimes.com already has 15 million readers. Examples closer to home: Jeff Beardwood tells me The Oracular Tree is now getting 30,000 hits a month, and according to Melvin Sterne Carve Magazine has readers in 40 countries. Obviously, the internet literary venture is already flourishing—and will only get better.

Perhaps you can tell me how you started writing?

As a kid I had a big vocabulary and a knack for words, and when I hit college two things happened: I felt a need for some form of self-expression, and I was turned on by great writers like Faulkner and Hemingway, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Soon I was cranking out sketches and vignettes and short stories (I never went through a poetry phase—too bad, because of course poetry-writing enhances skills like imagery and concision).

Any authors that you have been particularly touched by that you discovered on the net?

I haven’t read comprehensively on the internet, but one author who impressed me recently was Ginny Wray—I ran across an excellent prose poem by her on one site, then found her equally excellent short story (“The Fresh Young Thing”) in the November issue of Carve Magazine.

Do you read any internet literary journals or sites? How about print only journals, magazines, or zines? How do you feel they compare? Do they at all?

I browse, but do not read comprehensively in any venue. Print journals include the ones I publish in, plus some of the usual suspects such as Zoetrope, Threepenny Review, Rosebud and Glimmer Train, plus some less-known magazines such as Side Show, First Class and Small Pond. As for internet journals, I read the ones I publish in, and I’ve scouted many others for the fun of it. I find that the best internet journals—for example, the Barcelona Review and Carve Magazine—are just as good as the best print journals. For all journals the key is consistently high quality, and for the wide-spectrum (as opposed to specialized) journals, another key is the breadth, the variety of stories.

What kind of writing have you done and published on the internet?

In the past year I have published or had accepted for publication on the internet 13 short stories, 8 “bioludics” (zany fictional biographies of famous people), and 12 essays.

Do you feel your aesthetic has been influenced by the work you do or have read on the internet?

No. To me good writing is good writing, whether published in print or online. I write the story I want to write; where it gets published is a secondary issue. If I had to write to a specific market or venue, I’d probably stop writing.

Have you noticed any stigma related to internet publishing? Any bias against it?

I don’t travel in literary circles, so I’m not quite sure about anti-net bias. No doubt the initial internet propensity to publish anything and everything hurt its reputation, but the net is vast and I’m sure that anyone with a brain could see from day one that at some point the net would start putting up first-rate literary work. Some print snobbery will probably linger, but eventually it will be overwhelmed by the new reality.

Have you worked on any print or online publications? Do you care to tell us about the experience?

I haven’t worked on any print or online publications.