28 April 2005

Whispers of Wickedness! That's the name of the site with reviews on that I mentioned below. Completely slipped my tongue for a moment there!
Happy Happy!

So the printer says the mag should be delivered Monday/Tuesday. All 128 pages of it... Hoo yah!
Because of the size of the bugger, and the multiple computer crashes losing contents, a couple of items that were originally slated for 5 or 6 have been bumped to 7. (one story, 2 articles if memory serves...)
And the cover... oh man, love it. I nicked one of Greg Cartwright's Mage in Training cartoons for it (thanks mate!) and will get the pic (along with updated issue details) up on the website soon-ish.

Of course that means I'm still walking around in a post-layout pre-publication euphoria - which on the one hand is lovely because it more than compensates for all those hide under the table days, but on the other hand is getting a little dangerous.

Why? Well, see, there's this discussion going on in the TTAPress boards about doing an online version of The Fix but Andy C. wants someone else to organise. Now, personally, I think an online Fix is a brilliant idea (especially if he's thinking of discontinuing the print version) and from what I recall of the conversations, the Fix reviewers would pretty much be the same. (Must drop over there and actually post something in the conversation...)
And I'm so so tempted to volunteer (then my sensible voice points out that I'm already attempting to balance H&N, BFS Publications, this year's Fantasycon, next year's Fcon, other BFS duties and all the many Fam Biz bits I do to earn a living... and do I want to totally explode my brain or what?)

But then the Voice of Euphoria points out that it would be such a neat idea. Ok, I know that there's a good review site here and you can get your Small Press info from such places as Ralan... but still... how cool would an Online Fix be? It'd need to be a HUGE site, maybe integrate a feedback area for submissional experiences with the mags reviewed. (so a Ralan/Black Hole/Review site crossbreed then?)
Of course you'd need someone with some competence in web design to make it look nice..but the whole thing is just busting with possibility.
Maybe splice in a couple of small press feature articles each month. (Oh god, here we go, columns, interviews and articles dedicated to all things small press with cross links all over the place...)

And I've always (quietly) been all for promo-ing small press peeps (even pre-H&N, oh cynics you...) which is why I want to expand the link section of the H&N site to have a contributors dedicated section so there's links to the websites of everyone who's been in the mag, and also get extracts of their H&N work up. (part of the revamp)

But an Online Fix...

17 April 2005

Technical support now claims that the messageboard problem has been fixed... what a load of bollocks. All the user accounts and archives are still evaporated so the new start-from-scratch board is permanent.

And now all my emails have decided to go off in a huff too. Hammer. Computer. Let me introduce you to.

In brighter news, at least mums new website at www.first-time-tenant.com seems to be working out all right. The photo's a bit scary though.

16 April 2005

So technical support isn't being very (supportive, that is). Apparently most of the core programming php files got sucked up in wherever all the files got sucked up to. I dunno.

So new boards now wanged up on http://bradanpress.netfirms.com/chat2/nfphpbb - have altered links on the main site so off we go again...
And the forum seems to have completely disappeared to. Arrrrgh. If the technical support chappies don't come up with answers in the next few hours (like what they did promise), I'll wang up a new board.
I told you, technology hates me.
Good grief

So now all my web pages have managed to magically disappear off the server overnight? I mean, I could maybe almost sort of understand it if I'd actually been transferring files to it but nope, been nowhere near it, I swear.

The world's going mad.

07 April 2005

Le Mag

How long's it been? At least 22 years, and now at least half of you are drawing your old age pensions... (Or in the case of one Steve R, died, passed right through the light and reincarnated...) :->
So Issue 5 then, is now going to be a double with Issue 6, due out end of this month. Oh yes.(Another computer blew out on me, losing about half the contents of Ish 5 in the process - hence delays on mags & website updates etc. Have now given up using other peeps gronky second hand machines and have got a lovely new HP beastie that seems to be behaving itself so far.)

Issue 7/8, another double issue, will be out July.
After that, we'll be open to submissions (new guidelines & rates etc will go on site in June) and I'm looking at sorting out a more sensible (timely) schedule. Ideally I'd like to get another issue out this year, most likely Nov/Dec - after I've got Fantasycon out of the way, then after that we'll probably be shifting to a bi-annual schedule for '06.
Will update the the website with the basic details this week, and will save the complete site overhaul til June/July.

Fantasycon

Yoiks. We've got Simon Clark and Mark Chadbourn confirmed as GoHs, and are waiting to hear back on an MC and third GoH.
But more on that another time, else I'll get distracted.

The fabulous book de la mama...

...is going to be launched next week! That mother person got her freebie copies a couple of weeks ago and has been nagging me to get a website up for her before the thing hits the streets. No pressure. Oy vey.
Actually the book don't look too bad (forgetting the completely jumbled contents page and the last minute addition of pictures in odd places because they'd decided they'd finalised the text layout, finito.) And can I just be a little bit smug in the fact that half the editorial changes the publisher guy asked for were ones that I'd suggested to herself but she decided to ignore (snigger!) - plus the layout people used a couple of things in the book that I'd put on her manuscript to neaten it up. :-> It's the small things...!

So the beast is called 'First Time Tenant' by Patricia Barber, available for ordering anywhere you like. (And a good daughter would be organised enough to put a link up, but the good daughter's down in Bournemouth so you're stuck with me...)
Her website will (eventually) be at www.first-time-tenant.com next week (oh grief, I think it was .com, it's on my list of things to check.)

And herself has started the first draft on a companion Landlords book (meant to be more of 'here's how to get a stress free tenancy' than the bundles of bizarre techy stuff most other buy-to-let books do).

And wouldn't you know, now that we don't need funny renting stories for the PR (we spent December/January racking our brains for oddities); funny stories are popping up all over the place. Like Tuesday, herself had to check out a flat previously occupied by a total nutcase who was evicted because he shit in the doorways of all the other flats in the block. And apart from trashing the place, he left a live chicken in the oven. (Well, I'm sure it was live when he left it there, by the time mum got in to see it it was going green and pretty much as gross as you'd imagine!)

Lovely.