I'm going to make this fast, because I'm involved with several different household projects that I need to make progress upon before the rain comes back. As some of you already know, I've been doing a little remodeling here at the house. New bathroom floor, screening in the front porch, furniture refinishing, yardwork, that sort of thing. My schedule got thrown way off by a couple of weeks that it rained almost every day I had off from work. Now I'm playing catch-up and trying to get as much done as possible before the party. Aphelion's annual Summer Party takes place on the 22nd of this month- Less than two weeks away! Lyn and I are looking forward to seeing everyone who can make it over here for a visit. I've got a page of contact information, a map, and photographs of landmarks near the house to make it easier for people to find us. I've even taken a look at Google Maps street view photos of our neighborhood. Google Maps has us located at 894 Moons Grove Church Road, Colbert, Georgia. But that is close to our actual address, so I can forgive the difference between our US Mail address and our GPS location. ApheliCon 4 map, contact info, and landmarks is where you'll find all of that. If you plan to attend the party, please send me an e-mail or telephone us to let us know. I do need to get a count of how many people plan to be here so that I can stock up on food and drinks. This year the Atlanta-area steampunk groups have been invited as well, so hopefully we'll have more than a dozen people here.

I'd like to congratulate several people in the matter of last month's Flash Fiction Challenge over in our Forums section. Nate Kailhofer has been doing a wonderful job running the flash challenges on the Forums each month. For July, Liminal Day by David Alan Jones was the contest winner. As a special prize, Mark Edgemon adapted David's story into an audio play that is hosted over on Mark's The Creator and the Catalyst Studios website. Here is a link to the audio play ofLiminal Day. I can do no better than to quote Nate's post on our Forums when he announced the project was ready for listeners:

"Here it is. A prize earned, and now delivered, thanks to some hard work from Mark Edgemon and his crew. Congratulations, David.

by David Allen Jones

The voices of the narrator, the father, the sage and the fire were performed by Mark Edgemon.

This audio story was produced through the Creator and the Catalyst Studios."

Congratulations David, Mark, and Nate! Great work, on every aspect of this. And congratulations to all the folks who entered the challenge, each of you turned out some wonderful stories. It was very difficult for me to decide for which one I was going to vote, myself. From the comments, I think I was pretty much on a par with all the readers.

I'm going to "borrow" a little of Nate's thunder here to make a little announcement concerning Nate's other Aphelion duties. It seems that in the process of working up the series bible for the Aphelion Explorer stories, Nate has been working closely with pro artist Bill Warren, the fellow who came up with the idea for the series. Bill is doing more artwork for the series bible, providing more input on the design of the ships, and has decided that he wants to do portraits of each character! Now each writer will be able to see the faces of the characters for whom they are writing. Of course, this means even more work for Nate writing the series bible, editing the existing stories in order to blend in the new developments, and putting the Explorer web pages together for uploading. I want to thank everyone involved with the Explorer series. You are all doing a great job, and making something wonderful. I'm looking forward to seeing the new series "take off", in every sense of the words.

Well, that's probably enough out of me. It's time I let you go start reading this issue's collection of stories, feature articles, and poetry. There are some great things in this issue! You're going to love it, I'm sure. As always, please take advantage of our Forums to give our writers some comments, critiques, and feedback on the tales which strike your collective fancies.

Hope to see you at the party,

Dan