The Magazine for Mercenaries Enters Polite Society
5th September 2024
There is no such thing as a ‘magazine for mercenaries’, any more than there is a ‘magazine for drug cartels’ or a ‘magazine for car repos’–and if there were, you wouldn’t know about it.
In the early nineteen-eighties, Susan Katz Keating was living in California, working as a freelance journalist with a side gig waiting tables. On a newsstand, she came across Soldier of Fortune, a monthly magazine infamous for its gonzo war reporting and its gun-for-hire classified ads. “I wanted to write about mercenaries,” she recalled recently. So she placed an advertisement in the publication. “You paid by the word, and I was quite young and didn’t have any money. The ad said, ‘Are you a mercenary? Contact S. Katz.’ And then I gave my home address.”
Keating was flooded with letters. A handful of seemingly professional warrior types arrived at her door unannounced. “I also got some government agents showing up, because they thought that I was trying to raise a mercenary army,” Keating said.
In 1986, Keating began contributing to Soldier of Fortune, the rare woman to do so. Two years ago, she achieved a longtime dream by purchasing the magazine from its founder, the retired lieutenant colonel Robert K. Brown, for an undisclosed sum. She now operates as its publisher and editor-in-chief.
Another Narrative Media down-the-alimentary-canal-with-gun-and-camera look at ‘flyover country’; popular zoology for the Coastal Crust. Read it for the entertainment, but don’t take it too seriously.