Down & Out Still Up and Running

Over the last few weeks, I have received several notes asking me about the future of Down & Out: The Magazine. That handsome, perfect-bound quarterly debuted in August 2017, and the most recent issue—Volume 1, Issue 4—came out in August 2018. Had the publication adhered to its previous schedule, the fifth edition should have appeared in December of last year. But it didn’t, which concerned both readers and the mag’s contributors (including yours truly).

So what gives? I sent a message yesterday to editor Rick Ollerman, asking for an update on the publication’s future. Here’s his reply:

Down & Out: The Magazine has fallen into a delay along with the health of its editor. Work on Volume 2, Issue 1 is significantly completed, but a form of pneumonia has taken its toll on the human element. We’re off schedule due to illness, a serious one, but nothing more nefarious than that. The magazine is more alive than its editor, but we hope that situation will begin to stabilize itself some point soon.

Eric Campbell, the publisher of Down & Out Books, tells me that an e-mail message was distributed to the magazine’s subscribers “about 30 days ago,” alerting them to the next issue’s delay, but no broader announcement was made. Until now.

I’m pleased to hear that the delay in releasing this periodical’s next edition doesn’t portend anything serious. I have very much enjoyed Down & Out: The Magazine and my association with it (I write a regular non-fiction column, most recently about Jack the Ripper novels). Let’s all wish for Ollerman’s imminent recovery.