About Us - Better Than a Poke in the Eye
What is Better Than a Poke in the Eye?
Better Than a Poke in the Eye is a fanzine all about the comic fantasy genre. We look at products and events from authors such as: Terry Pratchett, Ben Aaronovitch, Jasper Fford, Robert Rankin etc.
We have no fixed agenda so we'll include whatever we feel is fun, relevant or just piques our interests.
Why the name?
Many years ago, Jason wanted to get a Discworld Monthly T-Shirt made and asked Terry for an quote to put on it.
Terry thought about it and came back with It's Better Than a Poke in the Eye With a Blunt Stick
he further expanded the quote with a series of regulations and standards regarding what constitues a blunt stick.
When we decided to rebrand we needed to find a more generic name and we remembered what Terry called us and decided it was just the right side of irreverent for us to use.
What is your pedigree?
For over 26 years, Jason Rincewind Anthony-Rowlands wrote about Terry Pratchett in under the name Discworld Monthly. When Jason met Rachel at the Manchester Discworld Convention in 2014 she very quicky became involved in writing the newsletter with Jason. It turns out that Rachel is very good with social media (something that Jason doesn't enjoy) and very quickly built our social media presence.
When Terry passed (way too early) we wondered how long he would be able to keep writing about Terry. For a while things got very busy in the world of Terry Pratchett with TV adaptations, documentaries, biographies, anthologies of early works etc.
But after a few years it was becomming harder to find information to write every month and increasingly the name Discworld Monthly became less and less valid. In the first seven months of 2023 we only managed to write two issues of the newsletter.
Also increasingly we'd wanted to mention other authors in the newsletter such as Neil Gaiman and Ben Aaronovitch (which we felt able to include because of their association with Terry), but we also wanted to include news about Jasper Fforde (who we couldn't find an association with Terry). So in 2023 we rebranded Discworld Monthly to Better Than a Poke in the Eye. Better Than a Poke in the Eye gives us the opportunity to explore a wider range of authors and to include some of our other interests such as Tank Girl! We'll still write about Terry but it won't be exclusivly about him.
It's going to take a while for us to find our footing in this much bigger pond. But its going to be exciting.
What happened to Discworld Monthly?
See our press release for more information.
TL;DR we felt that we wanted to expand our remit and write about more authors (we still love Terry btw!).
The old newsletters are not gone. Our website includeds a Discworld Monthly archive because some of it is too good to throw away.
How can I help?
If you have suggestions of authors we should look at (no promises) drop us an email at info@betterthanapokeintheeye.co.uk.
Purchase your books from our Better Than a Poke in the Eye - BookShop Store where we earn a small percentage from each sale and local book stores also earn a percentage.
If you wish to purchase books etc, we are also members of a number of Affilate Programmes (Including Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles, Blackwells, WH Smith etc) that allow us to earn a couple of percent commision on any items that you purchase from them.
If you wish to help support us financially you can paypal us using our paypal email address info@betterthanapokeintheeye.co.uk or use the Donate button below.
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