News and Announcements – February 12^th, 2012

So the site has been quiet. I haven’t had much free time, now that I’m student teaching, but I’m hoping that with some better organizational skills, I can get on top of things again and start producing some content. I have a post-apocalyptic essay in the works, and a review of Storm of Swords coming… eventually, as well as an interview with Nat Katz that’s just about finished. But if a tree falls in the woods and there’s no one to hear it, does it make a sound?

I’ve got some good news for sympathizers. I got work yesterday that Abandoned Towers Publications has decided to accept my short story, “The Miller’s Prince,” which I wrote for Professor O’Connor’s CRW306 class last fall. When I have a specific release date, I’ll shout it out on the site.

Also in regards to publishing and time organization, I have a proper announcement. The Weaving Knight is going to try its hand at playing publisher. This has been a while in the coming, and I've been learning about how to do it for several months now. I think I'm in a place where, with a small team, it can be done. I’m still in the development phase, but I want to try to put out at least one issue. It will be run and provided for free, as a fanzine, and I’m looking for people interested in lending a hand (more on that in a bit). For now, know that the central theme of the magazine is going to be unusual heroes/heroines in fantasy and speculative fiction. We’ll be looking for unconventional and unorthodox heroes and plots that challenge the traditional boundaries of the sci-fi/fantasy demesne. It'll be called simply, "The Weaving Knight Magazine," with a logo like this:

The timeline for this project is to get the first issue out by early May. Depending on time, volume, and other factors, we might do a once-a-month, or once-every-other-month, or maybe only one (though I doubt that will happen). I plan to host the content on this site, as well as binding it into .pdf, .epub, and .mobi files for e-readers. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can upload it to the B&N or Amazon networks without charging money, so… it’ll have to be downloaded from here.

Earlier, I mentioned some volunteer opportunities. I’ve got a few slots I think will need to be filled by generous volunteers. I’ve been slushing since October, and I’ve got the kind of from-the-underside understanding of how a magazine works. I also ran the Writers' Open Forum 2012 Campus Writing Contest, which seemed to run a lot like how a magazine should. Combined with a fair amount of research reading and looking at other magazines’ websites, I think I have a fair grasp on how we can make this work. I want it to be a team effort, and I want to produce a project that we as a team can be proud of.

Here is a list of the positions I’d welcome people volunteering for:

·         Slush readers (probably need only two)

·         Cover artist(s) (may apply by submission, too)

·         Proofreader (probably need only one, maybe two)

Volunteers will get an email address from The Weaving Knight site so that we can keep everything organized. Ideally, I’d like to publish two or three stories per issue, and maybe a non-fiction essay. If you’re interested in doing any of this—and I promise, the workload won’t be very much (if there is any at all; this is all conjecture at this point…)—shoot me an email at travis@theweavingknight.com . I’d love to hear from you.

Here’s to doing something new!