Diary of a Mad Editor

It occurred to me, looking at the calendar this morning, that the current issues of Gnome and The 13th Warrior Review are now officially three months overdue. People have been emailing me, asking, "what gives?" and I’m running out of excuses. Truthfully, aside from writing this blog occasionally, I’ve mostly been at the gym. I’m obese, hypertensive, with hypothyroid, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and two and a half years in remission from cancer. So my health has been my main priority as I’ve said on many occasions. That means I spend a lot of the time at the gym. I’m staying away from the ephedra diet pills, thank you very much. But I am rocking the weights and aerobics and, according to the scale at my oncologist appointment yesterday, I’ve lost sixteen pounds since Christmas. So, I’m on my way to slimming down if not quite on my way to publishing those two issues. I do, however, expect at least one of them to be online sometime before the end of the month. Maybe a hard push over the weekend will do the trick. Anyway, before launching anymore submissions my way, keep in mind that I spend two hours in the gym every day and only spend about two hours a week reading submissions.

Time is not you’re friend.

No, it’s not. You’ve got almighty death tugging at you at one end and Time is right there on the other end giving you a good hard shove.

What that song lyric? "Another year older and deeper in debt." Yeah, that’s about the size of it.

I had intended to publish new issues of 13thWR and Gnome, during the months of November and December 2009. Initially, I was sidetracked by my involvement in NanoWriMo — at least that was my excuse for abandoning that project. I got back to business just after Thanksgiving, after making my word count, but a few withdrawals from simultaneous submitters and other impatient contributors delayed me again. This time, I just said, "fuck it," and decided to set everything aside for the holiday, because, sometimes you just feel weary, irrelevant and utterly pointless and feel the need to reach for the Samsonite luggage and make a quick getaway.

Of course, the new year brings with it a sense of impending doom right along with all that possibility with Time and Mister Death doing the ole Texas two-Step.

So I opened my email earlier in the week to get a leg up on unfinished business and discovered a lot more submissions arrived during my two and a half week siesta than I’d anticipated. Reading submissions is a tedious job and I only have so much time to read them so . . . As it stands I have no clue when I will publish those two issues. Both are nearly done, but not quite ready to go live. And with a bunch of unrelated personal shit coming the next couple of months and this month already nearly half-over, I’m thinking about taking another indefinite break. I may not even post regularly to this blog in the near future (not that anyone cares — even thought the stats suggest otherwise, sometimes I think no one reads this blog).

Maybe I’m just depressed. Time is not my friend.

No, I’m not referring to what is arguably the best film in the long-running Star Wars franchise — I’m referring to yesterday’s announcement that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and several other media heavyweights including Time-Warner, Hearst and Conde Nast would be co-conspirators in launching a digital publishing platform and storefront to sell their digital content.

This announcement comes with both good and bad tidings for consumers of digital content.

The good news here is that it’s a clear sign that big media is finally waking up to the fact that digital publishing isn’t some kind of fad — that it is the future. It’s also good news that these companies clearly recognize that with so many devices coming into the marketplace on which to display this content, its not good business to publish their content to only one device.

The bad news is that this move is obviously the latest attempt by big media to force consumers to pay for digital content. News Corp., for example, has been on the frontlines of the movement to create a pay-for-content Internet.

I’m not against publishers making money, but I am against monopolies. More digital media properties in the hands of a few leads not only to higher prices for consumers, but allows those few companies to control the flow of information and makes it harder for smaller publishers to compete. Up until now, digital media was the last bastion of renegade publishers. Outfits like News Corp. weren’t as heavily invested in digital media in the past. That has changed with big media gobbling up smaller providers and even the large Telecoms jumping the fence to become not only access-providers, but owners and distributors of digital content, the digital universe is getting smaller — less democratic and less friendly. I’m still betting that many consumers still won’t want to pay for most digital content, but if I’m wrong, this could mean the end of the digital revolution as we know it and the beginning of a digital publishing hegemony that rivals the level of control big media has had over print publishing for decades.

^*This post is brought to you byMinka Aire