Your Editor Has Issues, Part 2
in which she contemplates the monster she's created, and considers its prospects.
This time, instead of opining, I wanted to use my editorial soapbox to share some ideas I have that will change the journal's format in what I hope will be some interesting ways.
I've been receiving a lot of great nonfiction submissions for the fall issue, and so there will be another three-to-four-piece nonfiction section for the fall, but after the fall issue is launched in October, I would like to immediately (or within a short period of time thereafter) begin publishing nonfiction pieces as biweekly blog entries on the Melusine blog. I may write some topical entries there myself. (So far the blog has been reserved mostly for logistical Melusine news and info.)
The new blog format will naturally invite shorter nonfiction pieces than most of the ones appearing in the journal so far, but the length of the various entries will vary, and of course, there will be room for many more pieces.
An active blog was actually part of my original conception for the mag, but I put its implementation on hold until Melusine was more solid as an entity and while I mulled over the logistics. Now I think it's the right time to try this new idea out.
Details will be available in the submission guidelines section when the fall submission period closes.
Another idea that I may as well announce while I have your ear is that there will be an annual Melusine poetry contest, and finalists will appear in the spring issue. The first deadline will be February 15, 2010. Again, more details, including cash prize amounts, will be coming soon in the submission guidelines.
Finally, I plan to publish biennial print editions of Melusine featuring highlights of the previous two years' worth of literature and art, including each year's poetry contest winner and runner-up. The first print issue will appear in summer of 2011... So this will be our only summer issue online. Every other year, a print issue will come out in the summer, and in the intervals, Melusine will take a little summer holiday. And you know, I'll be totally frank with you. It's so much easier to sit at a computer editing when summer weather isn't beckoning outside. But the great stuff I've gotten to read while putting this summer issue together made it all more than worth the effort of resisting. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
All this month's artwork is by R. Shamariah Kruse, except for the cover by Heather Waters-Brown, whose work was also featured in our debut issue.
Thanks again for reading, and I promise more ramble and less shill in my next installment.
JEK
