In my previous editorial, I said that this issue “should appear in your mailbox near the end of June”. Well, before the end of June arrived, I took a new job, I became primary caregiver during a family member’s long-term hospitalization, my ceiling was destroyed by a week-long water leak, I fell so far behind in the last class of my graphic design program that I had to take an incomplete, I threw my back out, and — as you might have guessed by now — I stopped putting any time into DargonZine.
Unfortunately, putting DargonZine out is still very much a one-person operation. Our contributors kept plugging away at their writing, so there are plenty of stories to print, but there’s really no one who can put issues out when I’m not around. It’s a problem we’ve known about for years, but never successfully addressed. However, we’re hopeful that will change very soon, as a result of Liam Donahue becoming our new assistant editor. Once he has gotten familiar with the process of putting out issues, we should be able to avoid lengthy gaps between issues like the one you just experienced.
But now, three months after this issue was supposed to go out, I’ve finally pulled my life back together again and can get back to the job I love: bringing you some of the best fantasy fiction you’ll find anywhere. And this issue is a great place to start. We began our long-awaited Black Idol story arc at the beginning of this year in DargonZine 18-1, and have printed the first of three sections of that storyline in the four issues that have come out since January.
In this issue we begin the second section of the Black Idol arc, which follows the bard Simona, the wizard Anarr, and a down on his luck peasant named Edmond as they travel together. Our earlier stories showed how Anarr temporarily neutralized the curse on a statue of the god named Gow. He and Edmond are now carting it off to Dargon, while Simona and her companion Kal are looking to Anarr to rid her of an old family curse. Thus begins the second section of the Black Idol, which we hope you will enjoy.
We’ve had a number of new readers sign up in recent months, and I’d like to thank all of you for your interest in DargonZine. If you haven’t read the first third of the arc, I’d encourage you to go back and check out the stories that have appeared so far. This is a great time to join us, because we’ve just begun a lengthy, cohesive storyline, and I think you’ll get a lot more out of the coming issues if you’ve read the handful of earlier stories, which began appearing in DargonZine 18-1.
One final thing to note is that during this brief hiatus, we also held our annual DargonZine Writers’ Summit. This year’s event was hosted by veteran author Victor Cardoso, and took place in scenic Traverse City, Michigan. No, really, it *is* scenic! I won’t relate all the details here, but we had a wonderfully productive yet relaxing time. If you’re interested in seeing the pictures and hearing about what we did, point your browser at <http://www.dargonzine.org/summit05.shtml>, or check out descriptions of all of our previous writers’ gatherings at <http://www.dargonzine.org/summit.shtml>.
Let me close by saying it’s great to have you with us, whether you’re a longstanding subscriber or someone who just signed up. We’ve got another 18 stories left in the Black Idol arc, and with a planned nine-chapter epic from Nick Wansbutter following on its heels, we’ll be bringing you issues one after another for quite some time to come. So clear out some room in your inbox, because we’re back again!
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