The End

It's now officially The End.

The End of September. The End of Summer. The End of my time at Chiaroscuro Magazine.

Volume 49 just went live as of midnight. It's my last issue as Managing Fiction Editor. I'm going to miss working on the magazine. And I expound on that in much detail in my final editorial.

I did leave out one tiny bit of trivia regarding my exit: Volume 48 was supposed to be my last issue as the MFE, but there was so much good fiction in that final submission period that I asked to stay on long enough to see it all make it in. Sandra and Brett were kind enough to let me do so, and I am thrilled to see these stories finally appear. I have a personal story of my own to go with each of them, but rather than risk colouring your experience, I will simply say they are all quite excellent, and ask that you please go and read them all.

I'd be lying if I were to say I was happy to be leaving. I've never been big on endings. When I'm reading a good book, I always hate that feeling of the ever thinning number of pages in my right hand. I always want it to go on forever. To just keep turning page after page and let the good times go on and on.

But that's never how it goes. It always has to end.

Fortunately, there's also always another book. And I'm about to crack open a new one now: Fatherhood. (No, not the one by Billy Cosby.) I've read the back cover and it sounds quite exciting. Some of the blurbs on the back make it sound downright scary, but they also promise that it will be worth it in the end. It's a dauntingly thick book. It makes a Stephen King novel look like a flimsy pamphlet. But I think I'm up for the challenge.

So onward I go. To a new Beginning. To a new Chapter One.

Deep breath. And...

...here we go.