Editorial: Permanently Under Construction

You don’t often hear the clatter of Crescent Blues Art Director Suzanne Frisbee’s shoes dancing over the tile floor of her Florida home. For one thing, the noise scares her cat. And as the cat goes, so go the two dogs (big and small) and the rabbits and whatever other animals happen to be in the neighborhood.

But Suzanne’s jubilation refused to be contained. “I’m so glad you finally decided to change the Links page!” she said.

“But people are already lining up to link, and we haven’t even changed the page. We could be swamped in the middle of preparing the July issue.”

“Good,” Suzanne said. “The banner listing was way too small. Besides, it took forever to load.”

Even before I brought up the idea, I suspected Suzanne would support the change. She revamps the ‘zine’s design on a regular basis to improve navigation and keep the pages fresh. She campaigned long and hard for a high quality search engine and cheered the loudest when Senior Gargoyle Donna Andrews brought one on line.

All this, and Suzanne creates our art too.

“Now we need to build a proper advertisers page,” Suzanne added.

“Aw heck, Suzanne, you know I can’t do anything ‘proper.’”

Over one thousand miles of telephone wire, I heard Suzanne’s eyebrow arch.

“But I’ll have to write the copy,” I whined. “I haven’t even finished this month’s editorial.”

“I know,” Suzanne said. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that too…”

Jean Marie Ward

In addition to editing Crescent Blues, Jean Marie Ward writes for a number of Web-based and print magazines, including Science Fiction Weekly. She is the author of Illumina: the Art of Jean Pierre Targete (Paper Tiger) and several short stories, including “Most Dead Bodies in a Confined Space” in Strange Pleasures 2 (Prime Books). Her first novel, With Nine You Get Vanyr, written with Teri Smith, is scheduled to be released by Samhain Publishing in late 2006..