Back from the Dead!
by Wendy Darling  

The last edition of this normally quarterly zine came out a year ago. I thought I owed people a bit of an explanation.

A year ago I put out the fall edition of Inception and fully excepted I'd be putting another one out in Feburary. Submissions flowed in, I made plans for new stories, and then KABOOM! everything train-wrecked and it's taken a year for me to get things back together again.

Nothing to do with the fans, mind you. I've received tons of submissions and a lot of patience, along with some deserved nagging, as far as when the next issue would be coming out. If you're reading this now, thank you for doing so, because it shows you stuck around :)

As for what threw things off so badly, the basic progression was that last January I realized I needed to leave the happy land of unemployment and go hunting for a full-time job. So I jumped into job hunt mode, with the requisite daily online job hunts, cover letters, interviews, calls from recruiters, etc. Then, in the midst of all this, I went off to Italy for a winter vacation, right around the time the Winter edition of Inception was supposed to come out. "Oh, I'll just put it together a little late," I said. And then I got a job offer, accepted and it was all over.

For six months, I worked in a very demanding, no-nonsense sort of job, probably the hardest I've ever had. There were no allowances for personal time, web surfing, and my commute was so short I didn't even get a chance to read. After work, I barely managed to get my regular consulting work done, so getting Inception done, even just one issue, seemed like a task I'd just never get around to!

At first I thought I'd do a combined Winter/Spring issue, then it was a Winter/Spring/Summer issue. But finally (after I lost my job and had my life back) I said, "May as well make it a full year and call it the 5th Anniversary Edition."

So there you are -- Happy Fifth Birthday, Inception Online!

About the Author
Wendy Darling (nickname Wiebke Fesch) is a web designer, fanfic author, and editor of Inception. She lives in Atlanta, GA, where she is self-employed, operating her own web design business, Metro Girl. Wendy is co-author of a Wraeththu Mythos novel called Breeding Discontent, and is an editor with Immanion Press. You can reach Wendy at wdarling@abraxis.com.