Hello once again and welcome to the April 2016 edition of Aphelion!

I've got to say that our traffic in the Forums section has fallen off lately. This saddens me since the feedback you post on the stories each month is a big part of the learning process for our writers. From your comments, they learn what they did right and wrong in their submissions from the point of view of the yourselves, the readers. Yes, the editorial staff help the writers craft the best stories they can. But nothing is quite as informative as reader commentary. Please do take the time to pop over and voice your reactions to the stories and poetry. What you have to say is important as well as educational.

Now, since Aphelion is not interested in making money for ourselves from our readers or writers, we never have any advertising. We never charge our readers, we never ever charge our writers, nor do we sell our Forums membership list to anyone. Aphelion is a free-zine, a writer's workshop, and that's all we want to be. I pay all the bills out of my own pocket. The monthly fees for the webspace we use, the domain registration, everything comes out of my income from the factory. That way no one has to worry about seeing adverts or paying website memberships. We're here to help beginning writers learn how to become better writers. We also provide a place for established writers to present work that falls outside of the genres they are best known for with their professional work. From time to time a pro will send us a sample chapter of a new book for use to help attract fan interest. Not one penny ever changes hands. Everyone on the staff takes time away from their off-line lives to put the zine out every month. It's a labor of love, a challenge, and a way for us to pass on what we, ourselves, have learned over the years.

The only risk to you as a Forums member is that some other member might disagree with your opinions and express their own opinions in a somewhat - shall we say - a less than diplomatic manner. This doesn't happen often. Aphelion has been blessed to have a lower incidence of ill manners throughout our entire history. Occasionally, it does happen, but not often and not without one of us stepping in to remind folks that they aren't in a normal comments section. So don't worry. There is a way to report posts that are abusive, or to report spam, built into the forum software.

Give it a try, voice your opinions, make new friends, and help our writers learn to increase their skills. Join the Forums and critique the stories you read. You can help the best amateur writers of today become the professional writers of tomorrow. You can change the world!

Down below my editorial every month is a set of links which point towards the sites where anyone who likes can buy copies of my short story collection and my music. No one is required to buy anything. No one is even required to look! I keep that here on my editorial page to keep readers from being bombarded by something that looks like an advert. If you want to get a taste of what my own work is like, I have some stories still in the main Aphelion Archives section, and one spaceport bar story still in the Series section in the Mare Inebrium archives, and two in the Nightwatch archives. Fell free to look them up and see what you think of them.

Speaking of the different shared universe series in Aphelion, we have three. My Mare Inebrium spaceport bar series, Jeff Williams' Nightwach Institute series, and The Aphelion Project series based on a proposal and artwork sent to us by pro artist William R. Williams. All of these are to be found in our Series section. As well as a mini-archive of my old friend Jim Parnell's humorous essay series Double Wide. All of these are well worth your time to check into. With the shared universes, all the writers are "living in each other's pockets," so to speak. Someone writes a story, which inspires someone else to write another story, which in turn inspires others to write even more stories. Everything just kind of snowballs into a huge archive of different writers bringing wonderful ideas to each series. So if you find yourself having finished an entire issue of Aphelion and you want still more, explore the Series section, please. You'll be glad you did.

Our Features section is sort of an eclectic grab-bag of essays, convention reports, articles, and reviews. That is also a fun way to spend time between new issues going live. Something for everyone can be found there.

All right, I think that I have dished out enough fanboy squee about Aphelion for one month. Time for me to shut up and let you get to reading the new issue! Enjoy!

Dan

BOILERPLATE:

First off, if you do the Facebook thing, feel free to join us on the Aphelion page there. The link is Aphelion Webzine. As an aside, the Editorial Mafia and I have found Facebook to be very useful. Given our different locations and schedules, it's come in handy as a way to discuss production details of new issues. Sometimes there are several of us using Facebook at the same time, so it's almost like the old chat room days.

My first collection of Mare Inebrium spaceport bar short stories was published in February by Dark Oak Press. It is available in both Kindle an Nook e-book formats, paperback, and hardback. I also that thre albums of instrumenal music out throgh the Create Space self-publishing website. If you like, you can click on the photo or the link below to fin all the info you would need to purchase my book in your preferred format, or an e-book of Flash of Aphelion, buy a CD of my music, or listen to tracks off of the albums on my Bandcamp website. Enjoy!

Dan's Promo Page

Dan

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ON THE COVER

Title: Herbig-Haro Jet HH 24

Photo Credit: NASA, and ESA.

Acknowledgment:  NASA, ESA, the  Hubble Heritage(STScI/AURA)/Hubble-Europe (ESA) Collaboration, D. Padgett (GSFC), T. Megeath (University of Toledo), and B. Reipurth (University of Hawaii)