The Black Idol
I guess it’s kinda funny that I don’t talk about DargonZine much here, since I’ve always considered DZ my life’s work. I guess I figure most people aren’t interested in the daily travails of running an Internet writing group.
But it’s been a long, long time since I last plugged the zine, and my friends list has turned over quite a bit, so I think it’s about time to let you know what it is, and what’s been going on. But first, in case you somehow know me but don’t know about DZ, I’ll give you the standard overview.
DargonZine is the longest-running electronic magazine on the Internet, and probably the longest-running writers’ group on the Internet, as well. I started it back in 1984-yes, twenty-two years ago-in order to bring aspiring writers together. The magazine prints free amateur fantasy fiction, but it’s really just the vehicle for the writing group. It’s one of those collaborative anthologies (aka “shared worlds”), but it’s low on magic and crazy stuff, and there’s a heavy emphasis on quality of writing.
So that’s the background. Now for the current news. We just sent out DargonZine 19-4, which is the climax-but not quite the end-of a major three-year, fourteen-writer collaborative storyline called The Black Idol. We started working on it at our 2003 Writers’ Summit in Austin, and it has filled 14 issues since the first story came out in DargonZine 18-1.
It’s the biggest and most successful collaboration we’ve ever attempted, and I’m really proud of the writers who put it together. But you can read more details about the arc and how I feel about it in the DZ 19-4 Editorial. Suffice it to say that it’s a major milestone, a staggering accomplishment, and a sign of the next step in the magazine’s evolution.
If you’re interested in DargonZine, you can get full issues or just new issue notifications via our Subscription page, or subscribe to our RSS feed. But LiveJournal users get a special deal: you can add the user dargonzine_feed to your friends list and have announcements of new issues show up right on your friends page. Painless and very handy, I must say; I hope you make use of it!
Although you probably couldn’t tell from the content of my journal, DargonZine is a major part of my life, and has been for nearly a quarter century, and the people who have been part of it are among some of my closest friends. I’m honored that over the years, many people have valued it enough to devote their time and energy to it.
There’ll be another DZ-related post in the near future, in all likelihood, as I’ll be heading off to Cincy for our annual Writers’ Summit in a few weeks, to reconnect with my clan and see what we can come up with as a followup to the tremendous Black Idol story.