Hello and welcome to the October issue of Aphelion.
First off, I'd like to welcome our new
Short Story Editor, Devin Marcus. Let's
give him a warm welcome. Devin edited one story in this issue as an
audition. When I got an e-mail from the author of that story heaping
praise upon Devin's editing and
suggestions on how the story could be improved, I knew
we'd found the right person. Welcome to
the team, Devin! He will start with a full issue for November, the
e-mail address for short story submissions has already been changed to
send submissions directly to him, and he is learning the ins and outs
of creating and uploading web pages to our site.
As a service to our writers, I'm going to link to the text of an e-mail
I received late Saturday night (September 30th.) from a fellow who runs
a podcast show; Dennis Serra runs the horror fiction podcast, Evil
Podcast. He is looking to fill at least six slots on his posdact, with
the possibility that the entire twelve-show run be from this search.
The details are all in the e-mail. I'll HTML that and post it in
multiple places here on Aphelion.
In other news, in about three hours I will be witnessing my oldest boy
getting married. Congratulations, Shaun and Kim! May your love last
forever and your lives together be full of joy.
I'm going to have a full day today, so
this editorial may not be very long. But, that just means you can get
to reading the stories faster, LOL! So
it's all good.
Iain has been pulling double-duty as both Poetry and Flash Fiction
Editors this month. We are still looking for someone willing to take up
the Flash Editor position, but for now
we'll keep plugging away at everything.
Iain and I are actually tag-teaming the Flash editing.
He's doing the story submissions and
I'm continuing to do the Challenges in
the Forums section. So, it's a little
lighter on both of us at the moment. By the way, congratulations to
Modelling_Mushi on winning the Flash Challenge last month! And a big
thank you to all the writers who entered. It was fun, as well as a
great set of stories.
When it comes to stories, for a writer they are like those little gifts
you receive unexpectedly, so you have to be prepared to seize them when
they appear. Some of us carry little notebooks, or keep a pen and paper
by the bed, of use some app in our phones or tablets. Whatever works
best you at the time. I just gotten my first smartphone, for instance.
My previous cell phone wasn't set up to
take notes on very well, but this one is a bit larger and can do a lot
more than just take photos, send texts, and make calls. I
haven't tossed the old phone, by the
way, I'll use it primarily at work.
I'll be adding my contact list to the
new phone gradually, as I have time.
I'll be carrying them both for a while
as I make the migration to the smartphone more complete.
But that's a story in itself, actually.
I'm not exactly an early adopter. I
don't jump on the newest tech until I
find I actually have a use for it that would justify the cost and time
to learn how to use it. I didn't bother
with a tablet computer for years. Then one day it was time for me to
pick out a service award for the anniversary of my hiring on at the
factory. In the catalog there was an iPad, among all the other gifts. I
thought about it for a day or two, then selected it as my anniversary
gift. It took me a while to get used to on-screen typing, but once I
did it was pretty handy. Then my desktop computer broke down and I had
to use the pad as my main computer for a while. I liked it so much that
I bought myself a refurbished mini-tablet. I liked that a lot as well.
My old phone was beginning to show some age. It lost some
functionality, got dropped a time or two, and has some wear on the
casing. A couple of the buttons are getting harder to push, for
instance. And it never could connect to the internet very well. After
watching the younger generation smartphoning it up everywhere, I
decided it was finally time for me to give it a try. So far, I like it
a lot. So, maybe when the next big thing comes along I
won't wait so long to jump on the
bandwagon.
Well, it's just about time for me to get
ready to go to the wedding. I'll close
this ramble and let you get to reading.
I'll be loading up the next Flash
Challenge in the Forums sometime in the coming week. Usually on a
Wednesday I'll post the challenge, give
two weeks for the entrants to write their submissions, then post the
stories for two weeks, and finally start the voting.
It's working so far.
Here's the usual boilerplate sort of
deal. Perhaps now that I'm not doing the
section editing, I can get back to doing those video editorials again.
Those are fun, but the post-production takes up quite a bit of time.
And now, this is ALSO a thing! Aphelion's first advert!
Feel free to share this on Facebook, G+, blog posts, and other
webpages. But only with the permission of the page or group owners! Be
polite and considerate, always. You'll have to look up the embed code
for the ad on You Tube, sorry about that, but the code won't display
correctly here. But the Share Code for Facebook and G+ is:
https://youtu.be/23qfziyt9Jo
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 back in the 1990s.
My first collection of Mare Inebrium spaceport bar short
stories was
published in February of 2015 by Dark Oak Press. It is available in
both Kindle
an Nook e-book formats, paperback, and hardback. I also have three
albums of instrumental music out through the Create Space
self-publishing website. If you like, you can click on the photo or the
link below to
find 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!
Wispy tendrils of hot dust and gas glow brightly in this ultraviolet
image of the Cygnus Loop nebula, taken by NASA Galaxy Evolution
Explorer. The nebula lies about 1,500 light-years away.
