To all my fellow writers in the Baltimore area, READ THIS!!!
2013 may be my year.
It takes 35 minutes to walk from Shockwave Records, home of their magazine, to the Parkville Library where I can work. It’s extremely convenient that I can walk straight down Harford Road after hard work at the library and talk to the coolest people while listening to The Ramones or someone playing guitar in the store and go back in less than an hour.
The coolest music magazine for rockers in Maryland, like me.
The place looks like a miniature Championship Vinyl out of the Nick Hornby novel High Fidelity, which eventually became one of my favorite movies. It faces a whole bunch of small business and shop buildings with several hair salons and a Subway up the road, but I don’t mind.
This place gets me as close to my college years and the exciting life in Towson and Baltimore City as I can get. It started with Christmas shopping in early December, 2012. It was the end of what was supposed to be my year, the year of the dragon. But once I saw the small magazine on the shelf by the door of the Record and Tape Traders in Towson, I had to research.
As I looked through their magazine in print and online, I noticed several things wrong with it: Their contributing and staff writers didn’t update their work regularly online. They were supposed to update everything at least once a week instead of every month. There wasn’t even enough writers and photographers (the publisher was the only listed photographer there) listed in their press information.
Plus, the list of vendors where you could pick up a copy was not big enough. Before I came along, they didn’t have a substantial WordPress site.
And the one thing that bothered me most about this magazine was the web site had no ads, meaning the publication didn’t pay its writers well with the money from an ad professional. In fact when I discovered the office and met the publisher, I found that the writers did not get paid at all. 
I immediately said, “That did it, Marie. I have to do something. Enough is enough.” I was thinking, if they don’t want me to write for them, then at least I can help them with a new WordPress site, which is what I did this week. On Tuesday, I came in and made some new friends at the publication, including the publisher Vince Anderson, and I showed them how user friendly WordPress was.
I had been playing around with this WordPress account for years, believe it or not!
Vince and the guys hired me on the spot. And even though I wouldn’t be paid for the job, I would at least get some experience as a writer. I need to do something while I’m unemployed and looking for work. After all, I’m extremely excited for the upcoming concert I’m covering for them: Reel Big Fish at Ram’s Head Live.
So as my first post of the year 2013 for Joy in Joy-nalism, I’m asking for your help. To successfully re-launch the new Shockwave Magazine WordPress site, I’d like this New Year’s wish to come true: find a great advertising executive to get even bigger music related ads on the site and perhaps on the publication as well, plus an even bigger staff of editors and photographers. Not to compete with City Paper, of course.
I want to help these people so much and turn them into a bigger Maryland publication. They’re my new family. This new project, like my former startup project with Baltimore Vinyl, is my baby.
Therefore, if you’re reading this from your home somewhere in the grand Baltimore area, WE NEED YOU!!!
We need all the help we can get at Shockwave. Like I said, I want this to be my year. No more moping around the house all day and all night, killing off my New Year’s resolutions, and thinking, “I’ll never get a job to pay my student loans and I’ll never be successful.”
This is it. I, like other family members of this magazine, want to be a paid writer and blog/web site advisor to help this publication soar.
If you love reading things about music like these:
My favorite bedtime story from Rolling Stone: Kings of Leon Take Manhattan.
The greatest Paramore story ever told by Alt Press.
Cool books about music: High Fidelity and Juliet, Naked.
Then please, send us a line.
Contact Vince Anderson at vince@shockwavemagazine.com or me at rachel.ahrens1@gmail.com if you want to help.
I cannot stress this enough. Please help. I am doing my best to keep this beautiful art alive.
Reblogged this on Rachel Beth Ahrens Fiction & More and commented:
Please click on the link for this post I have on The Joy in Joy-nalism. This is very important for anyone who reads my blogs. We writers all need you now.