Aphelion Editorial 100

Greetings, Friends! Join us in a little celebration as this issue marks both Aphelion's 100th, but also the 9th birthday for the zine. Hip-Hip-Hooray! Happy Birthday Aphelion! And happy Issue 100! Milestones, both. I never dreamed we'd come this far.

There have been so many milestones passed along the way. Oh, here is another one; issue 100 will probably be still running when the hit counter clicks over to 250,000. Not too shabby for a free e-zine. Several thousand regular readers, in over 65 countries around the globe... That's impressive too. 25 or thirty of our featured writers have later gone on to sell their work. Nearly a dozen established pro writers have sent us stories or sample chapters of upcoming books. Aphelion has gotten tons of online awards for oodles of stuff, even got into the top visited sites list for Starting Point for a few weeks. Aphelion has gotten several reviews, been the subject of a Canadian newspaper article, been study material for elementary school children in Australia and Junior College students in the Northeastern US. In short, Aphelion has been around long enough to have been a lot of things to a lot of people. A quarter of a million readers? Woah! I don't care if it did take nine years, that's impressive.

Now all this hasn't gone to anyone's head. My Aphelion t-shirt may have prompted limited recognition at the SF con I went to a couple of summers back, but I was surprised at that. Pleased, but surprised. And I hear nice things from people online all the time. I'm just happy that the Editorial Mafia and I have been able to make some kind of difference in the world. We just do what we do for the love of doing it. And for the reward of being able to contribute to someone's success, even if only in a small way. You writers succeed or fail on your own efforts. Folks at Aphelion, readers and staff, just give you advice. It is always up to the writer to adapt that advice into something they can use in their stories.

OK, so what does the future hold? Another 100 issues of Aphelion? I certainly hope so! I'm not going anywhere, and none of the crew seems burnt out. We're going to keep sailing ever onward, out from the bar where we began... Oops. Sorry Professor Tolkien, that just slipped out. Ahem. Uh, we're going to keep doing this zine until there's no readers left, and then some I suppose. There are new Mare Inebrium stories in this issue, and a surprise from Bob Moriyama in the form of a new Al Majius story, some more Best Of stories, new poetry, new short stories, a new novella... We're jam-packed with goodies for you in this issue. It's time I shut up and let you get at it. There's very few people who come here just to read my editorials, you know.

Well? What are you waiting for? Grab a party hat and some cake & ice cream, kick back, and start reading!

Back to work...

Dan

I now return you to your regularly scheduled reading...

THE END

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