Scalpel - my side of things

I have just posted to Scalpel, ending my association with the magazine.

This has been going on for a little while now and this is actually going to be my third post this week about the magazine's shut down.  This might very well give Scalpel Magazine's ending a touch of the theatrical "dying swan" but I thought that making each step public was the responsible and just thing to do.  As a writer, I have often waited and watched as magazines went through internal turbulence while I regretted not pitching my piece elsewhere.  Ultimately, no publication is bigger than the people writing for it and I wanted to make sure that Scalpel's writers were treated as justly as possible and full disclosure was part of that policy.

So I'm going to make public my experiences with Scalpel on a site I control in the hope that someone out there might learn something from my mistakes.

The idea for Scalpel was mine.  I first encountered Gabe Chouinard through the usual blog links and bulk emails and as he was someone who took an interest in thinking about SF criticism as well as doing it, we kind of hit it off and I was soon posting on his forums along with a number of other people.  I forget the exact circumstances but one thing lead to another and I suggested that the only way to make online SF criticism better was to lead from the front and I suggest we set up our own website.  At this point, I did not know Gabe's history.

One of the first responses I got regarding the project was from someone who claimed that Gabe had essentially promised to do work for him but Gabe had cashed the cheques but done nothing in the way of work to earn them.  At this point, my suspicions were raised and I started googling.  Going on what I knew of Gabe from my experience of him (he talked a lot about criticism but never actually produced any and claimed his website received thousands of hits a day when it manifestly doesn't) and what I learned from the net I cobbled together a mental image of the man I was dealing with.

Here was someone who was completely shameless in asking people to do stuff for him (even well known authors) and skilled at getting people to talk about him but with a tendency to "spin" facts about himself and a marked tendency to move on when he gets bored.  I saw in this image a compliment to my skills.  I am terrible at charming people online and far too British to ask people to do stuff for me out of the blue.  I imagined that Gabe would help me get Scalpel set up and generate lots of hype while I did a lot of the actual editing work and provided a lot of the content.  Initially I was pleasantly surprised as Gabe did edit a number of the pieces properly and managed to get people to vastly improve their own pieces largely by encouraging them.  When we launched Gabe and I talked pretty much every day and I saw no reason for concern.

By the time the first update went live, we had enough material for more than one update and had a load of different pieces in the pipeline.  Then Gabe suggested that we re-do the site.  Gabe's design aspirations and tendency to fiddle with his own blog meant that such tinkering was unavoidable and I welcomed it.  However, when the second update went up it didn't stay up and I awoke to find the site stripped of posts.  Gabe explained to me that his host had rejected the Wordpress software update but he'd get round to fixing it soon.  Then came the wait.

I was agitated with worry as every second you're down you're pissing people off, especially when you've gone to some lengths to make people talk and think about you.  However, Gabe was evasive and was online a lot less than he used to be.  After a week he promised me that he'd redo the site over the weekend claiming it was a "day and a half's work" but by the time monday had rolled around there was nothing and Gabe informed me that he'd gone to a cabin with his family for the weekend.  Originally he had been planning to stay at home but his family had begged him to go as he was looking ill.  At this point, Gabe disappeared completely only sending me an email telling me that they'd decided to move (no move had been mentioned prior to this).  After a week's silence Gabe got in contact again and informed me of marital and financial difficulties and told me he was now living with his father who did not have access to the internet.  Which takes us up to this post.

My issue is not with Gabe's personal life.  I'm sure what he's going through is difficult.  Sometimes the world conspires to prevent us from doing what we really want to do.  My issue is with the way that Gabe Chouinard has handled me as well as the writers and readers of Scalpel.  At every step from server crash to our last contact, I offered to take over administering and uploading to the site.  In fact, one of my last emails to Gabe suggested that I take over the running of Scalpel and publish it on a site and under a domain I own until he felt in a position to rejoin the team.  At every step I was rejected and Gabe again and again informed me that he'd get round to it.  The final straw was when Gabe failed to do an update this week but did manage to take material he had pledged to Scalpel and have it published by another website without telling me (I only learned about it when this popped up in my feed reader).  Whether this was a move designed to prompt me into being the "bad guy" who shut down Scalpel I cannot say but it did leave me in a completely untenable situation.

My first move was to contact the writers of Scalpel and inform them that Gabe was removing his content from the site and suggest that we probably should too.  I waited before making any official moves in the hope that Gabe would re-appear and update me on what was going on.

I have tried at every step to behave in as professional a manner as possible.  My first concern has always been for the writers because when I decided to start editing my main concern was to treat my writers the way I hoped to be treated when I was writing for other people.  I think that I have done the right thing in ending the speculation and making the whole sordid story public.

My main mistake was assuming that because Gabe's more negative personality traits were "known quantities" I could factor these into my dealings with Gabe and therefore trust "Gabe to be Gabe".  This was a mistake.  It was also a mistake to accept that Gabe be the only person to have control over both the domain name and the site's host as otherwise I could have run the website alone.

I can only apologise to the people who were caught up in the wake of this and hope that my mistakes are not repeated by others.

EDIT : As of a couple of days ago, the Scalpel site as well as Gabe's Urban Drift pages have been off line.  It transpires that this was not due to lack of bill payment as I initially thought (when I last chatted to Gabe he claimed to be down to his last 6 dollars) but part of a systematic desire to pick up all of his balls and go home, completely disengaging from the online SF community.

Obviously, I can't blame Gabe for wanting to leave the SF community as his name is effectively mud at this point but in deciding to shut down places like Frameshift (which he was evidently still hosting) and the Urban Drift forums without even offering anyone from those communities the chance to keep them going, Gabe has let us all down again.

Comments

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Gabe's friend already pointed that out.

As unfortunate as it is, it doesn't really change anything.

[The Stealth Geek]

You mighty want to make a separate post out of that last edit, only because it's been a while since that post.

Is it possible to rebuild the forums? Are they cached anywhere? (Confession: I don't actually frequent them so I didn't realize how active they all were.)

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Nah, it's okay. That's old news now, I just wanted to update what I see as a historical record. My aim was never to dog-pile on Gabe, only to keep a record of what happened.

As for the Cache, I don't think it's possible to get at it from the net. You'd have to ask the hosting company and Gabe to try and piece them together.

I know that the Frameshift refugees are thinking of setting up a new load of forums. I'm sure that they'll consider pursue all such routes.

[Phil]

What happened to frameshift?

[Phil]

NM, I read your last edit.