Today marks the 1-year anniversary of the release of our first issue. It’s pretty momentous for us, as you can no doubt imagine. So much has happened and so much has changed in that year. I should probably make a list.

• Switched from 100-copy limit to Print-On-Demand with no limit
• Switched from paying copy to token cash payments
• Began offering digital editions
• Had simultaneous heart attacks when Piers Anthony agreed to write an article
• Built a completely new website from the ground up (Thanks Matt!)
• Held our first Flash Fiction contest in June
• Had one of our covers BoingBoinged
• Had a bit of controversy
• Brought aboard slush readers to help us save time
• Released an oversized 12th issue
• Releasing our first Anthology (ongoing)
• Serializing our first novel online (coming in January)
• Passed 150,000 pageviews in our first year!!!

Whew! And that’s just the “major” points!

Another thing that is absolutely worth noting is that we reached our financial goal in November!

Now, that doesn’t mean we didn’t lose money – we did, and quite a lot of it. But we had hoped to raise enough money from sales of issue 12 and preorders of the anthology to cover our expenses above and beyond the magazine itself – in other words, we wanted to reach the point where we only had to pay for the magazine itself out-of-pocket, not our various other projects that are in the works. We just barely made it, but we did! Thank you so much, everyone who helped; whether it was with a purchase, a donation, or simply spreading the word, we needed every bit of help we got (really, we JUST made it), and we’re deeply grateful to everyone.

What this means is that all our current projects are ON, as well as the continuation of the magazine of course. And more projects… well, we won’t be starting any more until we have the funds to cover them ahead-of-time. It’s a shame because we have SO MUCH we’d like to do, so many ideas, but it is the smart and practical thing to do. This doesn’t mean we won’t be bringing you new stuff – it just means that the new stuff will happen depending on how much you all want it! We may do fundraising drives for specific projects in the future too. We’ll see how it goes. For the next few months we’ve got plenty on our plate anyway!

And because we have plenty on our plate already, We’ve finally surrendered to the reality that we need to defer more CG responsibilities to others. Letting go of our “baby” is tough, but we really need the time. The slush readers have definitely saved us time, so it makes sense to seek similar aid.

With this in mind, we’ve asked Kelly Jennings to come aboard and help with Fiction editing. Kelly is the author of Lunch Money, which appears in the just-released Action/Adventure issue. She’s Associate Professor (English) at University of Arkansas Fort Smith, and holds a PhD in English. She’s also written multiple novels, one of which will be published by Verb Noire in early 2010.

Kelly will be responsible for editing the fiction pieces we select for inclusion in the magazine; she’ll work with the writers to complete final drafts. She’s remarkably fast and efficient with revisions, and a pleasure to work with on top of that, so she’s very well-suited to what we need. Kelly will be added to the About page as soon as we have her bio; please welcome her aboard!

As you all no doubt know, Issue 13 just came out! We’re very pleased with this one: the writing is very strong from start to finish, and the cover art is so much FUN. Plus, it’s our first-ever dragon on any of our covers – about time!

Submissions to Issue 14 were amazing. We ended up getting more subs than any other issue except the LGBTQ issue. We feared that NaNoWriMo might cause a drop in submissions, but it was the opposite. Apparently Folklore really struck a chord with writers! And we may have set ourselves up for a similar December – we’ve already gotten a surprising number of submissions on day 1. Of course, having 14 genres to choose from could have something to do with it.

We’re reading furiously, and we’re almost through everything. We’ll be making our final selections and emailing authors in the next day or two.