Aphelion Editorial 089

First off, Happy Birthday Aphelion! We're starting another year of bringing you the best amateur fiction and poetry on the web. Thank you all for coming back time and time again. For reading the stories, and for making comments on them so that the writers may learn a few things about their craft. And thank you for the kindness that you've all shown to me over the last few trying months. Aphelion is not only a hobby/obsession with me. It has become an extended family. Thank you for being there when I need your support.

Sadly, there were other things going on the the background here at Aphelion during the last few months of 2004. In October, Cary Semar tendered his resignation as our Short Story Editor. He said he was just burned out after years and years of editing. Cary forwarded his folder of pending submissions to us, uploaded the final installments of "The Pollwatchers" & his final stories, bid us a fond farewell, and stepped gracefully back into his real life. One good thing about losing Cary though, now he'll have time to write his own stories again.

But that put the Editorial Mafia and I into a quandary. Who could we get to attempt to step into Cary's shoes? Well, for various reasons of her own, McCamy isn't able to devote any more time to Aphelion than she already does. Ralph teaches at the same school that Jeff does- with the same sort of mad schedule, too. He couldn't accept. Rob Wynne, Jeff, and I met frequently in the chatroom to discuss the matter. We polled the whole staff, voiced our own opinions, mulled it over, and finally came up with a name. Someone who could both do the job, and just might have the time. Then Cary recommended the same person. The die was cast, fate had spoken, and with only a token struggle against a cruel fate- Robert Moriyama has been strong-armed into joining the Editorial Mafia as Aphelion's new Short Story Editor. You can extend all the proper expressions of sympathy over his abduction to Bob privately. I imagine that escape route maps and hacksaws baked into cakes are traditional gifts for the condemned- Er, lucky devil. This marks the first issue that Robert has edited. Please join me in welcoming him to Aphelion.

So as one friend retires, another friend steps to the fore to fight the never ending battle for creativity, literacy, and really intense spell checking. LOL! Really, that's the way Aphelion's staff has always changed. People come in, stay a while, then move on when they have to. Meanwhile, other people come in to help out. Aphelion has always been evolving. I expect it will always keep evolving. Thanks to those many friends, readers & writers, artists, poets, musicians, who have helped make Aphelion into something special. I offer my own thanks to Cary Semar for all the years of hard work that he put in for Aphelion. Cary, you've helped make my dream real. You've helped make Aphelion the unparalleled success that it is today. You've helped hundreds of writers learn to be better writers. You've helped thousands of readers find something worth their time to read. Aphelion has reached readers and writers all over the world- in over 65 countries the last time I knew the statistics. You have been a big part of that success, Cary. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you for everything.

You know, if we all cheer really loudly and clap our hands like crazy for Cary and Bob- all at the same time... I'd be willing to bet that we'd scare the crap out of the rest of the world. And some of us would be sure to get locked up.

Maybe we just better stick to e-mailing them instead. OK? LOL!

Dan

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

THE END

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