Myths & Delusions • Editorial • October 2015
Welcome to the Fall. Or perhaps just the fall. As far as I’m personally concerned, with the oppressive heat of summer still lingering, autumn can’t arrive soon enough.
We’re very excited to bring you our final issue of 2015, full of not-so-straightforward takes on love and revolution and celestial mayhem.
In our fiction offerings, Fred Coppersmith cautions us about the devastating power of words (and words of power), Michael J. DeLuca demonstrates that even fantasy lands aren’t safe from the brutality of politics, and Vanessa Fogg shows us that even when ensconced in a lunar wonderland, the grass is always greener on another world.
Our poems span stars and planets and gods, time and music and witchcraft, seasons and deaths and what remains behind, courtesy of Sandi Leibowitz, Wendy Rathbone, Beth Cato, Judith Roney, Sonya Taaffe, Shveta Thakrar, and J.C. Runolfson.
The delightful nagini on our cover came to be via the brushwork of amazing artist Likhain. I want to extend a special thanks to contributor Shveta Thakrar for calling the piece to our attention.
As I write this, Mythic Delirium Books is in a state of happy chaos. I want to formally welcome our new assistant digital editor, Christina Sng, to the team (comprised of myself, Anita, and our invaluable assistant copy editor, Francesca Forrest). Christina has been helping out with the ebook layout side of things for a few months already, and she’s a key reason we’ve stayed punctual despite all this extra stuff we’ve taken on. We’re so glad she’s joined us. (Thank you, Christina!)
We have only just started producing the rewards for our successful Kickstarter campaign to fund the Clockwork Phoenix 5 anthology. We’ve also narrowed down the 1,350 story submissions we received for that book to about 60, and we’re now sorting through the finalists.
Our latest book release, Bone Swans by C.S.E. Cooney, had debuted to a stunning reception, with starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, and even more praise from Tor.com, Fantastic Stories, and three separate praise-filled reviews from Locus. On top of that, we officially launched the book in July at Readercon in Boston, and all the copies we had on hand sold out.
The same day I first drafted this editorial, Anita and I finalized the table of contents for our next anthology, Mythic Delirium: Volume Two. As you might guess, following the template of the first Mythic Delirium, this book takes the stories and poems from the second year of digital issues and reorganizes them into something new. Hugo winner Galen Dara once again contributes a spectacular cover.
Ordinarily I would wrap up with a preview of the Winter 2016 issue, but frankly, we’re so swamped with projects to tackle that I don’t yet have that lineup cemented. But don’t worry. We’re well prepared to keep this magazine trucking through 2017 and beyond.
We hope you’ll stay with us through the trek, and the best way to do that is to subscribe, of course, which you can do by clicking this link, or, if you’d like to support our partners at Weightless Books, this one.
And now, on to the magical journeys you came for in the first place . . .
—Mike Allen, Roanoke, Va., September 2015
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