Baby's First Zine
Monster Smut Un-Censored: Vol 1 (probably)
Zine Contents
Monster Smut Un-Censored is a collection of my favorite books and some of their raunchier sentences “censored” for your reading pleasure.
On the surface, this is a simple little zine showcasing a few of my favorite monster romances. I discovered most of these books and authors on Bookstagram, where the romance community is constantly self-censoring to avoid getting our content removed or, worse, getting banned. And now in a world where book bans are everywhere and the romance genre is increasingly under attack, I wanted to create my own little “fuck you” to all the fascists fucking with our freedoms. So…Fuck you. Fuck your book bans. Fuck your patriarchy. Fuck your attack on women, on the queer community, on freedom of expression in every form. It’s a tiny rebellion, but I’m going to keep reading whatever I want and sharing it with anyone interested.
Books included:*
Her Soul to Take by Harley Laroux
A Wolf in the Garden by Allegra Hall
Stalked by the Kraken by Lillian Lark
Ice Planet Barbarians by Ruby Dixon
Games with the Orc by Kathryn Moon
Mantras and Minotaurs by Ashley Bennett
Zine Creation
I went with the classic one-page mini-zine design. There are many useful templates out there for this design; here’s one. However, I’m in Portugal now, and the paper here is all A4 instead of 8.5 by 11. So, I made my physical template by folding an A4 using the same method and labeling the pages as shown in the template for US paper sizes.
Once my template was ready, I typed up the text elements I wanted to include. This took a couple of tries experimenting with the size and fonts I wanted, as well as the coloring. I’ve grown used to working with color, so using only black and white while still maintaining balance and interest on the page was a bit of a challenge for me.
After I had all my elements printed, I started cutting and gluing them onto my template. I quickly realized that was a mistake. So I peeled everything off my original template and made a second one, which I cut into eight separate pages. Now, I could easily design each page without committing it to a location in the zine.
Once all the pages were completed, I arranged them onto my original template with a bit of tape and scanned it into my computer for safe keeping.
My Sources
Let me preface this by saying there are tons of resources on how to make zines, zine culture, and history on the internet. These are just a few of the creators that made their way onto my algorithms and who I’ve learned a lot from and been inspired by:
Bre of Bre’s Tiny Print Shop Substack and brattyxbre on Youtube
Bre was probably my first introduction to zines, and she consistently puts out amazing content, including tutorials, inspiration, supply lists, etc.
Ra Avis of Rarasaur Substack
Their recent post, I want you to make a zine, has some encouraging words and useful resources that finally pushed me to take action.
Download
I won’t be selling the zine.** It’s free for download below with a few notes:
1. Please do not distribute or mass-produce the zine in physical form.
2. The file is in A4 format. When printing on 8.5 by 11, you’ll need to size to fit and trim the excess blank spaces before folding.
3. Here’s a link to folding instructions and a great intro to zines.
*Links included in this post may be affiliate links.
OBSESSED, thank you for making and sharing with us!
This is so cool, Sarah!! 🤍 I freaking love the design and layout you went with