Courage...

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Personal update... with the work on FU, I've not done much fiction writing.  I have a couple short stories going, and an editorial on Thomas Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against the Human Race.  Other than that, I am looking forward to our new publishing schedule so I can focus on finishing Elegant Threat. Part two is called Bakhara and follows Amr and Pristina as they leave Dar al-Salam to head into the wastes toward the New Madhi settlement and the dead men who called these very two different survivors so far away from the seas of their nightmares.  Part three, the remaining Amenaza Elegente crew return to Shah Ferdowsi space and the seas of Shanama.

After that (and for something completely different), I'll return to Bardonauts, to complete that story of a Buddhist rakshasa, night things (avicinauts), alien invasion, and travels through the bardo.  This meshes the dharma vampire idea I've had for awhile, with my love of the Barker-esque society of Others, with my Plastic Trees green spiders in particular and the alien invasion trope in general.  Um, and alien uplift.  And it's all kinda about dealing with grief.  ;)

Last, I'm going to just say to hell with it and write a picaresque Aether Age tale very much inspired by  the Dying Earth books (or at least the Cugel stories) as well as the Fafrd & Grey Mouser stories from Lieber.

That's my plan.  With FU bringing my focus on short works by other writers, I want to turn my attention in my own work to the long form.

I see, not a lot, but enough talk that it's worth addressing... to the question of 'why would a writer want to be an editor.'  When we first started FU, I thought we'd do all this 'modern' stuff (podcasts, ebooks, etc.) and that my IT background would be a leg up on those sorts of endeavors.

In actuality, I've found that creating a print zine preferable.

We're not against other formats (Aether Age is launching as an eZine; M-Brane Press and Hadley Rille have ebook versions of many of the projects I've been involved with) but for now, FU is a print magazine.  And though I have that ache to write more, creating each issue of FU has been a creative endeavor with its own, unique rewards.

That's all I can offer to that 'why do this' question... I'd like to think that FU is growing into something differentiated from other genre options out there, something particularly socially aware perhaps, without being politically obnoxious.  We are, in a time when so many are self-righteously strident in their exclusion of GLBTQ folks, a market enthused to publish works addressing such content, along with that of other under-represented groups.  And, in the final sum, we're publishing work that is compelling, fun, challenging.

So that's about all I can think to say about that.  <-- Forest Gump voice if you please.  ;)

B