Editorial Matters

By Cheryl Morgan

The first thing that I have to do this issue is apologize for all of the typos, spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. Kevin has been very busy at work this week and Anne has had Penguicon to prepare for. Both of them are away this weekend. So the proof reading has been done by me.

You may be wondering why I didn’t just give it another week and publish on the 30^th, but we have had the usual 4-week gap and if I waited another week I’d end up having to publish #129 while I was as Wiscon. That doesn’t make sense, so this issue goes out on the 23^rd and #129 will be done before Wiscon.

I could have done with the extra week for other reasons. I’m totally overwhelmed with books right now. Somehow I managed to review 13 books this month, which is about twice as many as I’m comfortable with, but 4 fewer than I really needed to get through. I think there’s only one that I missed that I had firmly promised a review to. Profuse apologies to Sharyn November and all involved with Firebirds Rising.

May is going to be pretty frantic too. We have the World Horror Convention coming up (guests include Kim Newman and Peter Straub). What with a John Picacio art show at Borderlands Books, SF in SF, and a probably Speculative Literature Foundation fund raiser, I’m likely to be in The City for the best part of a week.

I’m also very busy at Real Work. Consultancy is like that. Sometimes you get an extended famine (like most of 2005), and sometimes you get more work that you can cope with. Right now I feel like I’m trying to hold down two full time jobs.

This does mean that I am very pleased to welcome some more guest reviewers. Victoria and Nic will, I hope, become regular contributors, while Pádraig and Joe may only drop in when they have something to review that fits their areas of expertise. Pádraig, of course, adds another country to our staff list. And Joe will probably claim that Scotland is a separate country too. Delighted to have you all on board, folks.

Now if only I could find someone to review US magazines, anthologies, YA books…

For next issue I have novels lined up from R. Scott Bakker, Storm Constantine, Greg Keyes, Naomi Novik and Andrew C. Murphy. I’m expecting Chris Roberson to have copies Monkey Brain’s new Kim Newman anthology, The Man from the Diogenes Club, at World Horror. In the non-fiction department I have NESFA Press’s Ken MacLeod collection and a book of reviews by Tom Disch. Karina has been to see the movie, Tristan & Isolde; Juliet has a Kelley Armstrong novel; and Victoria is looking at David Marusek’s Counting Heads. Mario is reading a collection by Gary Kilworth. There may well be some reporting from World Horror, and we are expecting the results of the Nebulas and Arthur C. Clarke Award. Nothing like being busy.

Best wishes,

Cheryl