The Last DAPA-EM

Yes, DAPA-EM is defunct. The final mailing, No. 216, arrived in my mailbox yesterday. It was a complimentary copy, as I have been an ex-member since 1984, after spending four years in the ranks. That's me, second from left, attending the wake above.

DAPA-EM, which stands for Elementary, My Dear Amateur Press Association, was an amazing thing: A group of stalwarts so dedicated to mystery fandom that six times a year they would print up their own fanzines and send multiple copies to editor Art Scott, who would bind them together and mail the whole shebang back to all concerned. You might think of it as a forerunner of blogging. Someone once described DAPA-EM as "a cross between a religion and a disease," and I can't disagree. All of this began in the mid-seventies, and rolled on until this very moment. Over the years, 126 members have come and gone (or not). You would no doubt find many of those names familiar, because they're some of the movers and shakers of the mystery world.

Art Scott kindly invited me to contribute a couple of pages to the final mailing, prompting me to dig deep into my files. I found some stuff I still find interesting, including a horrible short story called "A Bullet for Bouchercon," and will be posting it on the Almanack soon.

For now, I present a few of the covers I put together way back when. This was the Stone Age of personal computing, of course, so I was working with press-on letters, a xerox machine, scissors and rubber cement. WARNING: Rated R for Adult Situations and Partial Nudity. Hotcha!