Fender Tucker

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Fender Tucker has been a disk magazine editor and publisher, and a self-publisher of books.

Tucker acquired his first name in high school, naming himself for his favorite guitar. Ironically, he played a Fender Stratocaster for only a few years before switching to the 1966 Gibson ES-335 which he still plays. He discovered computers in the early 1980s when the home computer was introduced and was hooked by the "puzzle" of learning BASIC. He still considers programming as true computing and Internet use as "shopping".

In 1986 he sold a couple of his home-programmed games to the Loadstar disk magazine for the Commodore 64 computer, and in September of 1987, applied for and got the job of Managing Editor of the magazine. There, he set a tone for the publication which gave it a "cult following" which lasted even after the Commodore 64 was considered "obsolete" by most. By the mid-1990s, its publisher, Softdisk, was no longer interested in continuing its publication, so Tucker, along with his wife Judi Mangham (a co-founder of Softdisk) split Loadstar off as a separate company, J&F Publishing. In 2001, the editorship was passed to Dave and Sheri Moorman.

An incessant reader, Tucker has a collection of vintage paperbacks and juvenile series books. His current obsession is Harry Stephen Keeler, a wacky mystery writer from the 1930s and 1940s. Tucker operates an independent publisher named Ramble House which republishes Keeler novels and other "forgotten" works.