October

Zine
Title:	October
Publisher:	Ad Nauseum Press
Editor:
Author(s):	Teri White
Cover Artist(s):
Illustrator(s):	Cheryl Frashure
Date(s):
Series?:	yes, all of the H/J zines are
Medium:	print
Size:
Genre:
Fandom:	Harry and Johnny, Magnum Force, Dirty Harry
Language:	English
External Links:
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cover

October is a 39-page slash, Harry/Johnny novel by Teri White that takes place in 1975.

It is subtitled: "Passages" and contains black and white photos of the actors along with several ink illustrations by Cheryl Frashure.

It has a sister zine of responsefic called Response to October.

It is part of Davis Diary and Callahan Calendar, a series of stories that document a year (1975) in the life of Harry and Johnny.

Some Context

In 1996, a Virgule-L mailing list member explained how fans reacted to the zine and why sequels were written by others:

[Fans wrote sequels]...after Teri's October where she "killed off" Harry Callahan just to see what happened to Johnny. Because Teri was deeply involved with professional writing at the time, she did not get October written until long after I wrote November, December and was well into Behind the Enforcer. Not knowing exactly what she would write, although she had explained the whole plot to me, I carefully left a gap of about three weeks between Oct and Nov, and still had to do a little judicious rewriting while I explained in my way Johnny's reactions post-October. People wanted to know or explain their own way what happened during those three weeks, thus Response to October was published much later with all those sequels, which fit into the established universe just fine, even though they didn't agree with each other, because nobody knew what anyone else was writing. It was a unique departure from the usual H/J single timeline universe, but very satisfying to H/J readers.

Original and Later Distribution

In 1995, Ruth Kurz wrote about Harry/Johnny zines in general, and she mentioned "October":

I wrote my H/J series and shared it with friends. It grew way beyond my personal circle, with my permission, but the feedback from so many people I knew made me feel it was still among friends. I thought I had control over where it went. I got a surprise/shock when I found out the first time how much farther it had gone when people I never heard of started to write to me about it, saying they had found the zines on tables at cons, and could they get the rest. I remember having mixed emotions about realizing I no longer had control of my work. The upshot was that I accepted and appreciated the spreading of "my" universe. I still have some control, as I've made it known that I can and will clone any and all of the past issue for anyone who pays costs. I still do this far more often than I would have thought possible for zines written in the late '70s and early '80s.

Now the e-mail question comes up and I realize that one of the joys of doing H/J was the illustrations, both photos and artwork, carefully chosen to complement the story. In one example, Teri White's OCTOBER, the illos told a between-the-lines story that would be totally lost with only a bare emailing of the story itself.

But I accept that email is taking over, and perhaps someday will include the illos more often.

Sample Interior

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  art by Cheryl Frahsure

• 

  art by Cheryl Frahsure

The Series

The series as written by Ruth and Terri contains 12 parts.

• January -- "snow, sex, sunshine, sex, skis, sex, saunas, sex..."
• February -- "a Saturday that belongs in the Guinness Book"
• March -- "Johnny plays Sam Spade in Las Vegas"
• April -- "Harry and Johnny go to Hollywood"
• May -- "a birthday that turns grim, grim, grim"
• June -- "camping in the Sequoias to get over May"
• July -- "tennis and Richard's cowboy"
• August -- "Harry and Johnny fly to the National Pistol Matches"
• September -- "Johnny's gallery showing, or 'Callahan'll handle it.'"
• October -- "a Grim Fairy Tale."
• November -- "Harry and Johnny go cruising (to Hawaii)"
• December -- "thank goodness, it's Christmas again"