Black Gate

At Readercon 2009, I wended my way through the lobby crush until at last I came upon a clump of ladies who were more or less my friends. A few strangers, true. A few people I had adored only cyberspacially, true. However, everyone was cheerful and in the mood to be introduced.

Introductions were made.

One of the strangers was a tall, smiling, black-haired (with a bright blue streak, like a sailor’s vocabulary) lady who may or may not have been wearing at the time (if she wasn’t then, she certainly was later) a wicked cool corset. Her name was Leah Bobet, and she was the Editor-in-Chief of Ideomancer Magazine.

Upon learning my name, she grinned and said, “Oh! I think you’re in my slush pile.”

If slush could blush, this one certainly did. I mean, what do you say to that?

Except, “Uh… Uh-oh. Ha-ha. Well. Ahhhh, NICE TO MEETCHA!”

Or some stammering equivalent thereof.

Since then, I did make it out of the slush and into an issue of Ideomancer, and have pursued my acquaintance with the Lady Bobet through the usual social networking sites (LiveJournal chief among them) and what other writing conventions we happened to attend together.

It gives me great pleasure, now, to invite Leah here to talk to us about Ideomancer and its exciting current issue.

Ladies and Gentlemen of Black Gate, I give you… Leah Bobet.

Ideomancer‘s one of the longest-running speculative fiction zines on the Internet. It’s been publishing regularly since 1999, and has gone through four publishers, been based in three countries, and had several different publication schedules. What hasn’t changed is the aesthetic: complex, literary speculative fiction from authors you might not have heard of right now, but will soon.

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