In a world where everything is owned by ‘The Man’ here is cutaway – a magazine run by writers who are just a little bit curious of what it feels like to be editors.

Remind me - what is cutaway?

Whatever you want it to be, since, we’ve sorted a printer, decided on a shape and a rough estimate of pages, and even designed a cover – it’s whatever drops though the virtual letterbox onto our virtual doormat making the virtual Labrador’s ears prick up as he noses at last night’s roast lamb in his bowl in the virtual kitchen.  We can’t fill it ourselves (well we probably could, but that would be no fun) so send us what you’d like to see in it and if it’s really good it will probably end up there.

So what’s the catch?

The catch is this.

One of us wants to write stories that make Hollywood directors tingle.  Stories which break conventions and have fantasy and science fiction convention attendees pulling their hair out.  Stories which make you want to wear a Dawn of the Dead t-shirt and a Trilby at the same time, tales that straddle genre.  This writer-editor wants you to finish a story and then ask ‘Wait a minute, so was he dead or did he really eat that octopus?’  This editor is also very good at grammar and he doesn’t tolerate bad dialogue.

Okay – you might think – I can handle that.  I’d like to send him a story, in fact, I’d like to buy him a pint of Marble Ale and talk about Philip K Dick or China Miéville .

Here’s the catch – he’s only half the team.

One of us doesn’t like all that trickery and rules.

One of us likes to listen to Erik Satie and feel the hair stand up on the back of his neck.  He walks the empty streets of Manchester with his camera in the rain and sits in a Northern Quarter cafe writing poems and drinking Earl Grey.  One of us isn’t half as good at grammar and doesn’t care much for dialogue as long as what he reads is from the heart.  One of us only wants to write poems, but settles for short stories and novels because poems don’t make one rich.  One of us thinks all a short story or a novel is anyway is a poem lost amongst lines and lines of boring words.

Okay…think you can get past them both?  It isn’t actually as hard as it sounds.  Really it has to be original (to please one) and heartfelt (to please the other).  If you can do one you’ve got a 50% chance, if you can do both – you can probably do the maths.

We love to write, and we both love to see it done well.  Picasso said ‘Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life,’ and I for one love the idea of providing that – washing the dust away for someone.  And touching someone.  Send us what you’d be proud to see among cutaway’s pages.

Dave