DargonZine is the publication vehicle of The Dargon Project, Inc., 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@dargonzine.org> or visit us on the World Wide Web at http://www.dargonzine.org/, or our FTP site at ftp://ftp.dargonzine.org/. Issues and public discussion are posted to newsgroup rec.mag.dargon.

DargonZine 23-1, ISSN 1080-9910, (C) Copyright April 3, 2010 by The Dargon Project, Inc.

Editor:Jon Evans <thegodling@verizon.net>, Assistant Editor: John White <john.white@DREXEL.EDU>.

DargonZine is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial License. This license allows you to make and distribute unaltered copies of DargonZine, complete with the original attributions of authorship, so long as it is not used for commercial purposes. Reproduction of issues or any portions thereof for profit is forbidden. To view a detailed copy of this license, please visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford CA, 94305 USA.

Editorial 

by Jon Evans
<thegodling@verizon.net>

We have an interesting pair of stories for this issue. Two veteran writers, Dafydd and Rena, have been with us for a long time. One of these stories was written under relative pressure: the looming deadline of a writers' challenge we have turned into an annual tradition coinciding with our Summit. The other story was nealry ten years in the making, finalizing a series that saw its first episode published last century! Two big extremes when it comes to writing time.

Writing is as writing does, so to speak. We can never tell when the urge to write, or exactly what topic we are going to write about, will come about. As amateur authors, we live by whim and fancy rather than professional proliferation. Most of us have not learned to write on demand, or focus our attentions on work that does not inspire us at the moment -- we do have day jobs, families, school, and a myriad of other distractions. Our ability, and desire, to produce writing is therefore sporadic, and not generally prompted by the pressure of time.

Unintended Consequences, written by Dafydd Cyhoeddwr, actually was written under that pressure. Is a tale that weaves throughout a variety of past Dargon stories. The Summit Challenge we faced in 2008 was to develop a story that leveraged actions, characters, and elements from a selection of some of our best stories published in the past. Dafydd, being the quintessential creator that he is, managed to incorporate references to all ten of the stories that were in that list. This is a feat of supreme brilliance, not lessened by the fact that several of those ten stories were originally penned by him. He had only a few months to create Unintended Consequences, and it is a lovely trip of nostalgia and magic woven through the Dargon timeline.

Rena Deutch's story, Spirit's Journey Home, brings an end to her and Mark Murray's long-running "Spirit" series. Contrary to Dafydd's several-month-long writing window, Rena has had almost a decade to create this piece. In finishing this chapter of Dargon's history, she also allows one of its most famous magi, Annar, to gain some closure of his own, and recant a curse he placed on a family bloodline many years before. While Rena has now finished off this series, we have more of her stories waiting in the wings, so don't think this will be the last you hear from her!

As ever, we wish you good reading. Enjoy!

-J