DargonZine
Volume 14, Number 5 |
Distributed: 5/26/2001
Circulation: 740 |
 |
DargonZine is the publication vehicle of the
Dargon Project, a collaborative group of aspiring fantasy writers on the
Internet. We welcome new readers and writers interested in joining the
project. Please address all correspondence to
<dargon@shore.net>
or visit us on the World Wide Web at http://www.dargonzine.org/, or our FTP site at
ftp://users.primushost.com/members/d/a/dargon/.
Issues and public discussion are posted to newsgroup
rec.mag.dargon.
DargonZine 14-5, ISSN 1080-9910, (C) Copyright May, 2001
by the Dargon Project. Editor: Ornoth D.A. Liscomb
<ornoth@shore.net>,
Assistant Editor: Jon Evans
<godling@mnsinc.com>.
All rights reserved. All rights are reassigned to the individual
contributors. Stories and artwork appearing herein may not be reproduced
or redistributed without the explicit permission of their creators, except
in the case of freely reproducing entire issues for further distribution.
Reproduction of issues or any portions thereof for profit is forbidden.
|
Editorial
f you read the HTML version of DargonZine, you should already know
about our Online Glossary, which lists every character, place, and thing
in the Dargon world. So for example, if you were to follow a link in one
of our stories to the Glossary entry for the shadow boys, you'd be
presented with an encyclopedia-like description of that group, and a
list of every story that they appear in. You will also get a description
of the role they play or what happens to them in each of those stories.
If you've been using the Glossary recently, that might not be news
to you; all our new stories have provided this information for more than
a year. However, it's only now that I can say that the job of filling in
reference data for all our back issues is finally done. There are now
reference details for every single appearance of every Dargon element in
every story we've ever published!
One reason why that's worth noting is how useful that information
is. For our readers, having reference details allows you to more easily
follow your favorite characters and things through all their appearances
in the magazine. By knowing whether the shadow boys play a
major role in a story or are just a passing reference, you can more
easily decide which previous stories you might want to go back and read.
For our writers, that same information makes it much easier for them to
research what's already been written about Dargon elements that they
might want to use in the stories they're presently writing or outlining.
In both cases, knowing not just what stories something appeared in, but
also a summary of its role in the story, is valuable and useful, and
we're pleased to be able to make that information available to everyone.
The other reason why the completion of our "Reference Update" is
noteworthy is because it was an immense job that required lots of effort
and time from a large number of people. To create this information, we
had to re-read more than 300 Dargon stories and write over 8,000
reference descriptions. That effort began more than four years ago, and
its completion has been a top priority of ours since 1999. Our writers
don't join the Dargon Project to become researchers, but many of them
voluntarily put a lot of their spare time and energy into pushing this
goal forward, in the interest of helping both our readers and future
writers.
You might not think of it at first, but the Reference Update is
perhaps the single biggest project we've undertaken as a group, and
after years of pushing, it's immensely gratifying to be able to say that
it's 100 percent complete. I hope it helps our writers create more
interestingly interwoven stories, and makes reading DargonZine a better
experience for you. I want to publicly thank and recognize the many
writers who donated their time to this effort. And having this finally
behind us should free up resources that we can use on additional
projects to make DargonZine even better!
In this issue we begin with two stories, each which has two
authors. We begin with the first of the three-part "Triskele", which was
written by P. Atchley and Rhonda Gomez. The second story is "Flingers",
a cooperative effort between two people who live 8500 kilometers (and
eight time zones) away from one another: Rena Deutsch and Cheryl
Spooner. Co-authoring has once again gained popularity amongst our
writers, with six stories among seven writers being published jointly in
the past 18 months, and there are more on the way. Co-authoring will
also be a major theme at our upcoming writers' Summit. The the first
half of Nick Wansbutter's "Death Has a Pale Face" rounds out the issue.
I hope you enjoy them all!
Our next issue will continue both "Triskele" and "Death Has a Pale
Face". It should appear in late June, and also feature a debrief from
the 2001 DargonZine Writers' Summit, which is being held this year in
sunny California!
Return to Table of Contents
