No Editor is an Island

Editorial

People tend to identify a publication with its editor. True, the editor determines a great many things about the style and content of the publication. But most can’t function as a one-person operation.

I certainly can’t.

Assistant Editor Teri Smith’s recent trip to the hospital underscored that fact (as if you or I ever doubted it). Even when her name doesn’t appear on a byline, she keeps Crescent Blues on track by proofing, reviewing and editing submissions, and beating me up when I get too big for my britches. (She really enjoys that part. After all, what are friends for?)

Her husband Stephen “SJ” Smith, our webmaster, plays an even more critical role. He delivers these pages to you, rain, sleet, hail and dead of night — except when Teri goes down for the count like she did last Sunday.

If all goes well, Teri will leave the hospital tomorrow for a long convalescence at home. SJ expects web things to return to normal very soon after that, but until they do we’ll be taking things a little easy. This month’s author interview, for example, may need to wait another week for posting.

But the subject will be worth the wait: L. E. Modesitt, creator of the Recluce series, the Spellsong Cycle and the Corean Chronicles among others. The interviewer too — SJ himself. Thanks, SJ, for everything.

Teri, you I’ll thank when you get better. So hurry up.

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..