DargonZine
Volume 14, Number 7 |
Distributed: 9/3/2001
Circulation: 752 |
 |
DargonZine is the publication vehicle of the
Dargon Project, a collaborative group of aspiring fantasy writers on the
Internet. We welcome new readers and writers interested in joining the
project. Please address all correspondence to
<dargon@shore.net>
or visit us on the World Wide Web at http://www.dargonzine.org/, or our FTP site at
ftp://users.primushost.com/members/d/a/dargon/.
Issues and public discussion are posted to newsgroup
rec.mag.dargon.
DargonZine 14-7, ISSN 1080-9910, (C) Copyright September, 2001
by the Dargon Project. Editor: Ornoth D.A. Liscomb
<ornoth@shore.net>,
Assistant Editor: Jon Evans
<godling@mnsinc.com>.
All rights reserved. All rights are reassigned to the individual
contributors. Stories and artwork appearing herein may not be reproduced
or redistributed without the explicit permission of their creators, except
in the case of freely reproducing entire issues for further distribution.
Reproduction of issues or any portions thereof for profit is forbidden.
|
Editorial
t's been a long, long time since I had to apologize for the
lateness of an issue. Typically, our goal is to distribute issues on a
very predictable schedule every four to six weeks. For the past five
years we've done a wonderful job, but it hasn't always been that way.
We had some pretty mean years in the first half of the 1990s.
Issues were put out unpredictably, whenever we had enough material and
time. Sometimes there'd be a four-month gap between issues, followed by
three issues in a six-week period. One of our readers' biggest
complaints was the lack of a reliable publication schedule. In 1996, we
made a commitment to our readers to distribute issues in a more
controlled fashion, and of the 50 issues sent out in the past five
years, only four have been delayed beyond our ideal target.
Some numbers will help illustrate how dramatic the change has been.
From 1989 through 1995 we distributed one issue on average every 9.2
weeks, plus or minus a whopping 8.7 weeks. It was just as likely that
our next issue would come out in one week or four months! Our schedule
was very clearly out of control. Compare that with our performance since
then: from the end of 1996 to the present, we've averaged one issue
every 4.9 weeks, plus or minus just 1.7 weeks!
As you can see, we heard our readers' concerns, and have done our
best to put issues out on a more regular schedule. But I find myself in
the position of letting you know that we may not be able to print issues
as predictably as we have been. No, the dot-com meltdown hasn't impacted
us, nor have we had to lay off any of our volunteer writers! But there
is a clear reason.
Back in 1996, when we decided to begin sending issues out more
regularly, we were fortunate to have many stories that were either
waiting for publication or nearing completion. We enjoyed a steady
supply of material to print, and we had a number of prolific writers who
ensured that the queue of ready-to-print stories was replenished just as
quickly as we could publish them! Although we'd often have one or two
contributors whose writing flagged for whatever reason, there always
seemed to be other active writers with more stories to enable us to meet
our publishing schedule. In short, with DargonZine coming out once every
four to six weeks, our writers were creating enough new fiction to
support the magazine indefinitely.
That worked out tremendously, as we've been very proud to be able
to bring you 135 great new stories over the past five years. But in
2001, we've hit a bump in the road. We've lost a few productive writers,
our new writers haven't produced many new stories, and even our
longstanding writers have had reasons for not writing that range from
mandatory military service, moving, visa problems, overseas work
assignments, family illness, and other life-impacting events. In short,
instead of one or two writers flagging and the other writers picking up
the slack, it seems that this year almost everyone has had to put their
writing aside for one reason or another. Our usual steady stream of
submissions has slowed to a trickle, and that means that we can't put
out issues as often or as predictably as we would like.
Of course, that doesn't mean DargonZine is an endangered beast.
We've survived slow periods before, and like all others, this particular
slowdown will resolve itself in a few months as new writers come on
board and our current contributors return to their writing. However,
it's likely that we won't be able to print issues as frequently as our
readers have become accustomed to. I apologize for that, and ask for
your patience. We have a number of stories that are in early draft
stages, but it can take a long time for a work to go through our
exhaustive peer critique process. Rest assured that I am shepherding
stories along, and will compile them into issues and distribute them as
often as is practical. And if you didn't notice this issue's two-week
slippage, perhaps you won't even notice the change at all; it seems more
important to us because, having heard our readers ask for a more
predictable schedule, we take our publication timeline very seriously.
In the meantime, enjoy this new issue. In it, we have a new
standalone story from Jim Owens, one of DargonZine's remaining founders.
We also conclude the three-part "Triskele" series, an exemplary
co-authored effort from our Texan contingent: P. Atchley and Rhonda
Gomez. And finally, Dargon veteran Dafydd begins his two part "Talisman
Eight", resuming work on his immense "Talisman" epic after a
well-deserved six-month hiatus.
And if you value the free stories that DargonZine brings you and
want to help me encourage our writers to keep cranking out stories,
please feel free to drop them an email. Their addresses are shown on
nearly all Dargon stories, as well as on their bio pages on our Web
site. I'm sure they'd welcome your encouragement!
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