It's the start of a new year, so it seems like a good time to outline my plans for Raven Electrick, the little speculative e-zine I've been publishing since 2000, and for Raven Electrick Ink, its print-publishing sister, which began life in 2007.

First the good news. I plan to continue publishing speculative print anthologies under the Raven Electrick Ink imprint, a tradition that began with Sporty Spec: Games of the Fantastic and will continue with Cinema Spec: Tales of Hollywood and Fantasy. Cinema Spec, a planned trade paperback anthology of speculative fiction and poetry about moving pictures in all their forms, is slated to appear in the third quarter of 2009. I hope other themed anthologies will follow.

I've decided that Raven Electrick, in its e-zine form, will cease publication in May 2009. The stories and poems already accepted for the e-zine WILL appear as scheduled. In fact, I've just added a new story, "A Fable of Heraclitus" by Louise Norlie, wherein a magician's daughter is haunted by the sense of a terrifying secret.

The web site ravenelectrick.com will be revamped later in the year as the homepage for print publisher Raven Electrick Ink. I'll add some specialty bookstores and, to keep a hand in electronic publishing, will run the occasional online fiction or poetry contest. The archives for the e-zine will be maintained on the site in the same form in which they appeared from 2000 to 2009.

I'm not looking at this as a sad occasion, but merely as an evolution from one type of publishing to another. Vive la Raven Electrick!