Okay, not really, but I did muck around with php files for the first time today. I worked for ten hours on a friend’s website. It’s going to be located at www.cahootsmagazine.com but it’s not up yet… the holding page, designed by the layout designer because I took to long to get the WordPress installation going, is what you see there now. (My page should be up by the end of the week, though, so if you dally, you may not see the holding page it replaces.)
The magazine, by the way, is being launched by some old friends of mine, Carla and Michele, who are veteran classmates who studied in Saskatoon with both Guy Vanderhaeghe and Tim Lilburn at the same time I did. They’re busy moms and professionals, but they felt a burning need to put out a womens’ magazine which isn’t all about, oh, you know, that crap that womens’ magazines are all about: how to please your man, how to lose weight, which makeup and clothes to buy (even if you can’t afford them)…
They’re planning to be very careful about the advertisers they take on, and they’ve got a mixture of a very affirmative vibe and a strongly “get real!” vibe too… which I can say is a mixture of Carla’s and Michele’s personalities. The magazine is called Cahoots, which is to suggest that all these women who want more out of a womens’ magazine are kind of part of the same underground “we’re better than that” conspiracy that is sweeping the nation… which, by the way, is Canada, as this is to be a Canadian magazine.
Anyway, the first issue is coming this winter, but they’re trying to round up advertisers and submissions, too, so they need a completed website up and running, as of… oh, a few weeks ago.
Which reminds me, I’ve noticed a number of my readers are women, and women who write, no less. If anyone out there wants to get in on the ground floor, and has any ideas they’d like to submit, either for a feature or a column, please send an inquiry email to . You don’t need to be Canadian to submit. I don’t think they’re paying, yet, but they are hoping to get to that status sooner rather than later, and are sure to remember those who were willing to publish for nothing when the rag first started out. If you’re a decent writer, you probably stand a good chance of getting something in there, too!
As for me, I’ve got a to-do list that’s 8 things long, but a few of those things are BIG. And I’ve been penciled in to write a column on blogging women for the magazine, and I need to get my first instalment to my editor very soon… but after ten hours of being a Hardass Code Monster, I need to go for a walk with music in my ears and enjoy a nice mint-choco ice creamsicle left here by none other than Lime, who it seems also spent her Monday being a Hardass Code Monster: the format of her blog has changed again.
Off I go for that walk.