In the three years (sorry) since the last issue of The Savage Kick, two of MSP’s writers have died. Both Seymour Shubin and Robert McGowan were great writers and great to talk to.

Seymour’s death started with a bad fall and he drifted in and out of consciousness for months. The last email I received from him simply said: “Steve: I don’t know what’s happening to me.” Seymour’s lovely family were around him at the end. But it’s still fucking hard not to miss him.

Leading towards his death, Robert was more aware that his end was coming. He had non-Hogdkins lymphoma for over a year, caused by exposure to Agent Orange in the Vietnam War. He was on a morphine drip and had been told he had two or three months left. Rob was still semi-aware when he emailed me that day. But he died two days later. His equally lovely wife, Peggy, died one year later in a car accident. It’s fucking hard not to be angry about all of that.

Talking to both Seymour and Robert towards the end of their lives, they often said the same thing about their writing. They hoped it lasted, even for just a little while. Robert summed it up beautifully by calling it “temporary immortality.”

It’s easy to think that if you write something it will last forever. But Rob, as ever, was smarter than that. Name me twenty writers from before 1900. Only the commercial ones truly survive. I’d rather read Gorky than Jane Austen, but how many will even know Gorky in another hundred years?

Savage Kick #7 has four stories by writers who are (or were) behind bars. Jeffrey Frye - the Bank Blogger - is currently teaching fellow inmates how to write. When you get down to it, all of them want to leave some kind of legacy. When you’re banged up for most of your day, writing provides some sort of record of a life that only four walls will see.

In almost every SK issue I ask writers why they write. The typical answer is that it’s cathartic. Writing is a personal therapy. Sometimes it’s just plain fun and an escape from the daily grind.

I continue to worry about the overbearing influence of digital literature. I still hope people discover Seymour or Robert or Jeffrey in some dusty bookshop someday. It’s hard to bump into a book online. The new hides the old. And when you have access to everything, why bother to find something unheralded?

Websites and Kindle are finite resources. Technology moves and websites run their course, while a book has a chance to survive. It’s something physical. At least temporarily.

Hope you enjoy the seventh issue of The Savage Kick, especially if you stumble into it in some charity shop in 2035. Don’t worry, fart jokes have been included to lighten the mood.

Murder Slim Press