Welcome to Issue 10

We finally have a new editorial image. And about bloody time too.

It's a picture I took on a hike last winter solstice. We could have used it, or something similar, at any time. The reason we didn't was because we were trying to come up with something "more", like an open, blank journal page with a quill pen and ink well or something similarly fancy. And we wound up using a simple picture of nature that I've had for a year.

There's a lesson in there.

As for the rest of the issue...

Mattias has written an article on locative art, a concept of art existing in cyberspace, explored in William Gibson's novel, Spook Country, and its fledgling growth in our real world.

As the cover always needs to relate to one of the issue's articles, Mattias and his friend, Carl Allander, came up with our cover and did a fantastic job.

Our profiled artist this month is Melinda Takács, a Hungarian artist I met online. After seeing her work, I was quick to ask if she would consent to grace our pages and she said she would be happy to. She has an exhibition coming in the spring and I wish it had happened when I was in Budapest.

I have two pieces in this issue, both very different from each other.

The first, I'm quite satisfied with. It's a humourous look at human sexuality inspired by some observations I made over this past summer. I enjoyed writing it and during the editing, I actually previewed it with six people, males and females, in their 20's, 30's and 40's.

I've never used a "test audience" before. It'll be interesting to see if it gets the same response from our European readers as it did from my Canadian and American friends.

My second piece was hard to write.

It's an article on the job market and job hunting. Seemed simple enough. And considering I'm presently out of work, you'd think that would make it even easier, living part as it were.

That's actually what made it so hard. Living the part. Every time I tried to sit down to write it, it actually became so discouraging a subject to me that I kept walking away from the keyboard.

Despite some valid points I wanted to make and some humourous anecdotes I've acquired in my quest for some meaningful work, and despite the desire to make it a well crafted article... it was an albatross.

It was supposed to be three pages but I cut it to two. Maybe someday, when I'm more distanced from the subject matter, I'll re-write it.

We really hope you enjoy the other 3/4 of the issue though. And this is as good a time as any to say that we've got some more things in mind.

We've got plans for a redesign of the site that we hope to have finished for December and Winterwind's five year anniversary. And we've got a few more things that we're really excited about and on second thought, we're not going to tell you.

You'll just have to wait.

Peace.