DargonZine
Volume 14, Number 6 |
Distributed: 7/1/2001
Circulation: 736 |
 |
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 14-6, ISSN 1080-9910, (C) Copyright July, 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
s an Internet-only publication, DargonZine functioned for many
years without our writers ever meeting one another face-to-face. It
seems difficult to believe now, but before we started having annual
gatherings of our writers, we were actually a little concerned about
meeting in person. Would our fellow writers turn out to be people you
wouldn't want to be around? Would people get along with one another?
Would disagreements begun on our discussion list carry over and grow
into divisive conflicts in person? And even if everything went well,
would just meeting one another change the healthy group dynamic we'd
built up over the years?
For many years, meetings between writers were rare, and mostly
one-on-one; as Editor, of course, I met more than most, and got along
well with just about everyone. But it was ten years after the founding
of FSFnet, later to become DargonZine, before any sizeable or organized
meetings took place. The change happened gradually over the mid-1990s.
In 1994 I spent a two week vacation driving from Boston to Austin, and
met six of our writers who lived along my route. In 1995 and 1996 three
or four of our more active writers got together (in
Boston and Denver,
respectively), again on personal vacations and also as trial runs for a
larger gathering.
Those initial meetings worked out well, so the next year, 1997, we
planned our first official Dargon Writers' Summit, with attendance open
to all our writers. Our goals were to have fun, get to know one another,
set some direction for the magazine, and explore the craft of writing.
As it happened, we had a lot of fun running around our host city of
Washington DC, got a lot of valuable work done in focused working
sessions, and generated a lot of excitement and enthusiasm about
DargonZine. It was by all measures a resounding success and forever
dispelled our earlier fears about getting our writers together.
Five years later, we have just returned from our fifth Summit,
which took place at the beginning of June. This was our most lightly
attended gathering, because some people have recently left the project,
and others had time conflicts. Although only six Dargon writers (and one
former writer) showed up, we still got a lot done and had a blast, as
well.
Each year one of our writers volunteers to take on the
responsibility of hosting the Summit in their home town. Hosting is a
big job; it involves not just planning activities, but securing lodging,
reserving (and paying for) conference space, coordinating (and paying
for) transportation, planning airport pick-ups and departures, and much
more, and none of it should be allowed to go wrong.
This year's host was Rena Deutsch, and she did a superb job as she
shuttled us between our base in San Jose, California, and San Francisco.
Typically we try to find things to do that are unique to our host area,
but which still allow us to socialize with one another. In San Jose, we
visited the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, and also the Winchester Mystery
House, one of the most ludicrously-built domiciles made by man. In San
Francisco we crawled around on the rocks at the Cliff House, walked the
Golden Gate Bridge, and sang with the sea lions at Fisherman's Wharf.
All that, in addition to Summit standard activities like billiards,
mini-golf, go-karting, crazy tabletop games, and, of course, plenty of
eating! Big thanks go to Rena for running one of the smoothest Summits
we've had to date!
About a third of our time at each Summit is devoted to serious
work, and this year's working sessions focused primarily on
co-authoring, a topic which has come up repeatedly due to several recent
co-authored stories. We had in-depth discussions about what makes a
co-authoring experience work, and then followed it up by splitting into
three pairs and getting some hands-on experience by collaboratively
drafting some stories. In fact, there's talk about finishing and
publishing two of the three stories that came out of our writing
exercise!
Of course, that wasn't our exclusive focus. We got to learn more
about DargonZine's history by sharing some project folklore; we
continued to evolve and refine our mentoring program; we talked about
how we make more use of the shared elements of the Dargon milieu; we
reviewed our annual goals; and we had a contest to see who could write
the best story lead-ins. As you can imagine, the working sessions were
intense, but among the most productive we've ever had.
And, looking back on five years of Summits, and after having met 23
of the 48 published Dargon writers, I continue to be amazed that we were
concerned about what might happen if we got our writers together in
person. Each of our Summit meetings has been productive, rewarding,
exciting, and helped move DargonZine and our writers forward. And more
than anything else, it's been great fun sharing so many unique and
interesting experiences with the great people who freely give their time
and energy to produce stories for DargonZine.
A write-up and photos from this year's Dargon Writers' Summit can
be seen on the Web at <http://www.dargonzine.org/summit01.shtml>.
This issue features a poignant new short piece from Jon Evans, who
returns to the scene of his 1997 story "Sailor's Homecoming". The issue
continues with the second installment of P. Atchley and Rhonda Gomez's
three-part "Triskele", and concludes with the second half of Nick
Wansbutter's "Death Has a Pale Face".
That's it for now, but look for us again in another six weeks or
so. Thanks for your continued interest in DargonZine, and please help us
stay in business by spreading the word!
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