First: Only TWO DAYS LEFT to get in your submissions for the Alternate History issue!

Second: Only TWO DAYS LEFT to read and place your vote in the Flash Fiction Contest!

I reached a point this evening where I couldn’t think of anything that I had left to do for Issue 8 that I could do right then. There’s some things I’ll wrap up tomorrow, and of course there will be the actual release late late Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, but nothing NOW. Even though there’s excitement and tension leading up to Release day, it’s a very relieving feeling. Of course, this is also the point where my thoughts start transitioning to the next issue: where we are, what’s next, etc. Actually that really started a few days ago, but now is when the next issue becomes a more predominant focus. Tomorrow will begin our more intensive reading of new submissions, for one thing.

Another thing that still seems to happen around this time of the month is I get a bit of cognitive dissonance: We’re not really about to put out issue EIGHT, are we? We’re actually still going for our eighth issue? The thought partially comes from the knowledge that the majority of new zines fold (for one reason or another) after just a few issues. I have a lot to say about that, but I think I’ll save it for another post since I could go on and on. For now I’ll just say that I’m very grateful to all the people who’ve contributed to CG, and to our readers, for giving us great motivation to keep working hard at it.

I realized a couple days ago that there are some things I could create templates for that I haven’t. It would dramatically speed up the process, so I feel kind of boneheaded for not thinking of it, especially since I’ve mentioned many times how useful templates have been for us. I’ll be trying to get those set up soon. In fact, I think I may set up an entire “set” of templates and folders that I can just mass duplicate every time we start work on a new issue. Then everything is already where it needs to be and I don’t have to go back and find them in older folders, one file at a time. Just thinking about it now makes me excited to think of how much more streamlined the entire process would be.

This week is going to be unusual. We have Release Day right in the middle of the week (Wed. is the 1st). That means pretty much the entire week is intense reading. But next weekend is 4th of July weekend. We have Friday off from our day jobs, and we’re supposed to be driving out to a weekend gathering/barbecue that’s family tradition. However, Friday is also the 3rd, which is when we usually try to have our first read-throughs of all submissions wrapped up, and start looking more closely at our short list to make our choices. I have a feeling we won’t have a lot of time for it over the weekend, so we might end up a couple days behind where we want to be as a result.

July we have to be extra on top of everything, because we have to get WAY ahead by the first few days of August; August 5 we leave for WorldCon, and we’ll have very little time for CG business while there, so it’s absolutely crucial that we don’t come back to Mass. and have to do a full week’s worth of catch-up.