Hello, and welcome to the second issue of Aphelion's 20th year!
I haven't a lot to talk about this month for my editorial. February was
a short month and has been a busy one as well. One of the things that
happened was that all of Ahpelion's files were moved to a brand new
server over at out internet hosting service. This was pretty much
painless for most of you. Once the move had been made, the staff and I
found a few glitches had cropped up. A few days of posts were missing
from the Forums section. That happened becasue the copy of our website
was made on a Monday and the original files were still avilable for you
to use until the following Friday. So any posts made that week didn't
cet copied over to the new server. Which included a post by myself
warning people to save copies of their posts to re-post once the move
was finished. That may be irony. I'm not sure. Another thing that had
to be tweaked was a glitch in the settings that didn't allow the pages
themselves to be displayed correctly. Rob Wynne fixed that fairly
quickly. Another problem was that our FTP wasn't configured correctly
for the move. The ISP had to fix that for us. But now we seem to have
all the glitches ironed out, so YAY!
So of course we have all the usual goodies on tap for you in this
issue. Plenty of stories and poetry, a selection of Best Of items from
our 20-year-old backlogs, and so on. We do hope you'll pop over to the
Forums and dash off aa few comments on the stories. That helps our
writers learn more about writing. It's a big reason why Aphelion has
been so successful. Don't be shy, do not fear, the Forums are free to
join and free to make comments.
Before I get to the "main event," as it were, I have a
couple of announcements to make. Aphelion is taking applications for
two positions on our editorial staff. We need a new Flash Fiction
Editor and a new Short Story Editor. You are up to the task, or if you
know someone who might want to join us, feel free to send us a message.
Nate Kailhofer has been associated with Aphelion for a decade or more,
and has served in various editorial positions for almost that long. But
the time has come for him to re-dedicate his energy to his own writing.
So he has come to the difficult decision that he will have to step down
as Aphelion's Flash Fiction Editor and Mastermind of our monthly Flash
Contests in our Forums. Yeah, it's the end of an era here, folks. Nate
has been one of the best editors to ever grace Aphelion's staff. I've
learned a lot from him, myself. Whoever steps into his shoes better be
Paul Bunion-sized! It's going to be a difficult example for anyone else
to live up to. Now, there are blessings here for Aphelion, because Nate
is determined to remain a contributing member of the Forums. But he
needs to make time to write his own stories, at last. We may be losing
the best Flash Fiction Editor we've ever known, but we are sure to gain
another resident pro writer in the near future. If you're one of the
people who takes your Flash Fic seriously, and have the bent to teach,
now is the time to convince Nate you are willing and able to carry on
his legacy. Naturally, Aphelion writers are preferred, because they
already understand the way we work. But the job is open, and we need a
worthy successor to step up and do the heroic deeds the job entails.
Applicants need only to go to the Aphelion Facebook page and indicate
their willingness to join our motley crew. And may the best applicant
win.
Kate Stewart, our newest editor, recently discovered that there is some
off-line embuggerance that is about to go down in her own life that
could prevent her from having any time to spare to remain our Short
Story Editor. She doesn't want to leave, and she isn't happy about
having to leave, but this is something that is going to keep her from
having the necessary free time to stay with us. Kate is a fiercely good
editor, and a good fit for the crazy that is the Aphelion Staff. We are
all saddened that she will be leaving. Her work has been exemplary, her
dedication has been without peer, and her absence will be difficult to
adjust to enduring. Once again, if you have what it takes to do the
hardest job Aphelion has, meet us on the Facebook page and make
yourself known. Better do it quick, too. I believe this is Kate's last issue with us.
We are also looking for writers to do audio interviews with, and video
interviews as well. That would entail using Skype to meet up with me
for a chat. I'll record that, and then splice it into a video to post
on You Tube. The link to those would be embeded on a page in the
Features Section, or on whatever page that seems to be the best fit.
The interviews that are audio only would have some still photos as a
slideshow. The video ones would be a simple screen captuse of my
monitor while the chat is running. As I see it, scheculing these would
be the most difficult aspect. This is, after all, a work in progress.
I'll be ironing out the bugs for quite a while.
So, this is now a thing. A video editorial, for which you will be the
first victims-- Um, the first to experience something unique in the
annals of... whoever keeps annals online, as it were. Yes the following
video is a mere proof of concept, which will hopefully lead up to
something actually worthy of your time and attention. I decided on this
because there weren't any willing victims, um, writers or staff members
leaping at the chance to be the test subjects, um, participants in this
grand experiment. It'll last about an hour, all told. Well, I am a bit
long-winded, as you well know. Future video editorials will no
doubt be shorter. I'd like to make them a fifteen minute format. You
know, something that wouldn't be too long or too boring for viewers to
sit through. I don't know about you, but as I watched myself on the
first video, I kept wishing that I'd speed things up a bit and stop
rambling so much. I also need to work on the lighting a bit. Everything
looks a bit too redish for my tastes. I'm still ironing out those bugs
as well. And so, with much ado about
nothing, I present to you, Aphelion's second Step into the 21st Century:
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
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!
ON THE COVER Title: Combined X-Ray and Optical Images of the
Crab Nebula Credits for X-ray Image: NASA/CXC/ASU/J. Hester et al.
Credits for Optical Image: NASA/HST/ASU/J. Hester et al.
