Call for Backers, Fearful Symmetries, Edited by Ellen Datlow in Conjunction with ChiZine on Kickstarter: An Audio Mini-Interview
This is a very brief interview – I’ll be doing a longer one with Ellen in the next few months. I wanted to catch up with her, though, about her Kickstarter campaign for Fearful Symmetries, an unthemed horror anthology she will edit, published by Chizine. As of right now, the campaign is underway and not yet fully funded. I thought it worth calling people’s attention to it because:
1) Ellen edits amazing anthologies, mixing work by seasoned pros and promising newcomers (and no, she’s never bought anything from me, and likely won’t for this anthology either. She only takes the very best).
2) This campaign was one Ellen purposely undertook the hard way. She could have partnered with a publisher and raised only the amount of money needed for author’s advances, but decided this was a poor precedent to set.
When we finally reached “The Tale of Beren and Luthien,” my 
Early on in Sean Howe’s book-length history Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, the reader’s imagination is spurred by a throwaway anecdote: in 1937, New York magazine publisher Martin Goodman and his wife planned to return from a trip to Europe aboard the Hindenburg — on what would turn out to be the final tragic flight of the German dirigible, which ended with a terrifying aerial explosion and fire that led to the deaths of 36 people. Goodman, as it happened, was too late to get tickets and took a plane instead. You can’t help but wonder, though. What if he’d died then, before he’d expanded his magazine line to include comics? Before he’d hired his nephew Stanley to work in the office and do fill-in bits of writing? What if Marvel Comics, the subject of Howe’s book, had been stillborn? What would have been different in the development of comics, of popular culture, of the North American imagination? Maybe everything. Maybe nothing.
We’ve had a great fall here at Black Gate: more folks visited us than at any time in our history, and we’ve had steady increases in readership every month since June. We’ve nearly doubled our traffic since this time last year — which would be terrific, if we could just get all you folks to wipe your feet before stepping on the carpet. In any event, thanks for the support, and here’s to an even better 2013.