Xrisville Humor Magazine Closes Its Doors
Online, June 21, 2014 (Newswire.com) - With the release of its seventh issue in June of 2014, Xrisville magazine closes its doors after four years as an independently produced and distributed Canadian humor magazine.
"Many factors contributed to the decision," says Xrisville creator Xristopher Bland. "Escalating printing costs, readership numbers and rising postal costs all had their part, but aside from the practical, I felt the magazine had simply had its time, and it was time for me to move on to new things."
Uniquely combining parody and satire with both fiction and non-fiction first-person narrative, Xrisville debuted to critical acclaim in 2010 at cafes, bookstores and specialty shops across the GTA. By 2011, Xrisville had reached Northern Ontario, New Brunswick, Vancouver, L.A., New York, Jamaica, Australia, Amsterdam and Paris through a network of friends and readers, and would go on to reach as far as Estonia, Sweden and the Netherlands. Crossover stories would appear on the TV Guide Canada website and in Canadian Living magazine. In 2013 after moving operations to the Candy Factory studios in Rockwood, Ont., Xrisville launched the Radio Xrisville humor podcast on SoundCloud, as well as a companion site on Bandcamp. In early 2014, Xrisville launched itself as a WordPress site, where Xrisville issue #7 became available in downloadable PDF format and in limited-run hard copy.
"Xrisville has been the most enjoyable of adventures for me, and I'll always look back fondly on the four years I spent behind the wheel of the Xrisville fun bus. Xrisville will likely remain on WordPress. Humor has long been a craftwork I've enjoyed, so I can envision myself perhaps releasing the odd specialty publication in the future, but the main focus for me has shifted to ABM Publishing & Creative Services—a wider landscape for me to offer stand-alone e-publications of different genres, as well as editorial and illustrative services to both businesses and individuals… I hope people enjoyed Xrisville. My goal in setting out was to entertain people and offer new perspectives on life, and I hope I did that, but in its larger framework as something of an imaginary land, I hope Xrisville helped point the way for people to find their own towns or shires or however people refer to their own personal, inner villages."
Xristopher Bland can be reached at abmcreativeservices@gmail.com