Aphelion Editorial 018

Gotta get out of bed, get a hammer and nail
Learn how to use my hands, not just my head
I think myself in a jail, Now I know a refuge never grows
From a chin in a hand and a thoughtful pose
Gotta tend the earth if you want a rose

--Indigo Girls "Hammer and a Nail"

Welcome everyone to the 18th issue of Aphelion Webzine. I am your celebrity guest editor Rob Wynne, stepping in for the inestimable Dan Hollifield [What did you call me? --ed.]. Dan sends his apologies for the lateness of this issue, but he has been up to his elbows in getting his new house fixed up and ready to be moved into, landscaping, and so forth. So Dan is turning the reins over to me for this issue, and possibly next, which by hook or crook WILL be published in the first week of December.

As we have grown, and our readership has grown with us, we have seen the pressing need to improve our processes. In order to faciliate that, we've added yet another member to our staff. Jeffrey "The English Teacher" Williams has joined our board as our new Production Editor. Many of you are asking "What the heck is a Production Editor?" That's ok, so did Jeff. Jeffrey will be overseeing our production schedule, making sure that submissions are flowing in a timely fashion from editorial to publication, and working on ways to improve our procedures to make getting the webzine out on time every month easier and quicker, so that you can enjoy the quality fiction that Aphelion has come to represent in the online publishing world.

Please remember that you can subscribe to our mailing list and get notifications when the new issue goes on line. Due to the vagaries of amatuer publishing, we have been known to slip a deadline from time to time, but we never announce an issue until we actually get it online. You can subscribe by sending an email to majordomo@america.net with the body "subscribe aphelion"

Speaking of that, I wrote in the lettercol a couple of weeks ago that Aphelion is now listed in the eZines Database webpage. This webpage, which you will find linked above, lists hundreds of zines in all areas of interest. Well, we got a note from them a few days ago that we had been picked by their editors as one of the top five webzines submitted to them in the month of October in ANY genre! We're quite proud of this, but of course, the real credit goes to all the authors and artists who make Aphelion what it is each and every month.

Since we added Kim Holec to our staff as poetry editor, many of you have asked when we were going to start publising some. Well, the time is now! Peotry begins in this issue, and we'll have all the submission guidelines for poetry updated by this weekend.

Those of you who quietly read our stories each month, thanks you! But if something strikes you as particularly good, why not drop a note to the author or post to the lettercolumn? And if something strikes you as needing work to get it "just right", then we, as authors, especially want your comments. Aphelion exists to give authors a forum to place the work in front of a critical audience and improve their craft, so telling us what you did and didn't like helps us all grow as writers.

Finally, my personal apologies for those of you checking back daily for the new issue. I know how frustrating it is to be waiting for those new stories, because I used to haunt newsstands waiting for the monthlies myself. But, don't forget that we have, in our infinate love for you, our reader, given you a reason to come every day, namely, our comics page! Freefall and Burno the Bandit are both well worth the time to stop in for, and are now together on a single page for easier reading!

So enough of my prattle! Let's get to reading!

--Rob Wynne

THE END

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