Sometimes you have to wonder what people are thinking when they make choices on how to do things related to their jobs. I've got someone at my theatre whose responsibilities are primarily financial. It's her job to find donors, grants, and sponsors... to bring in contributed income for the company. So today, I get an email saying that she wants to know if its possible to add house/lobby music for our cabaret performances like we did for our holiday show. Never mind that its a different space, different type of show, and that we've done almost ten years of these shows without having house music before the performances. Theatre convention suggests that you don't use recorded music prior to a musical, because no live performance ever really matches up to the 'finished' quality of a studio recording so its unfair to your performers.

And its a lot of extra work for something we're going to use for five performances compared to a show that runs for five weeks, with eight or more performances per week.

So... 

Anyways... you don't need to hear about life in grumpy sound land. What you want to hear about is life in the Whateley Universe. For today's bit of insight into that place, we're going to delve into the follow up (part 2) of E. E. Nalley's story "Boys of Summer" ... Enjoy!

I hope everyone's Christmas was warm and wonderful and that, whether you celebrate it as part of your religion or just enjoy it as a day off work; that it went well this year. For those of you who had to work (food service, entertainment venues, and those few other industries that tend not to get holidays in the normal fashion), I hope you get a chance to make up for the insanity of working while the rest are celebrating. My own New Years gets absorbed by shows this year... we have them on both Eve and New Years Day... but at least we had Christmas day off. In fact New Years weekend is going to be especially nuts for me as we not only continue our holiday show through Sunday the first, but we are also in technical rehearsals to open the next show this weekend as well. I could reeeeally use cloning technology right now, if anyone's got a lab working on it?

Here behind the scenes in Whateley land, we seem to have kidnapped a few of Santa's elves and have quite a few stories ready to go out the door and more than a handful in the works. Part of that, of course, is JG's return and the excitement of chatting with him behind the scenes again. Part is just the timing, as a number of projects that have been in the work for a while now came together at the same time. 

In the WhatIF author group, we see to have a bit of a bottleneck on stories asking for review before their authors feel ready to release them to the public. If you happen to have time and are willing to work with authors by offering constructive feedback (not being insulting or telling the author how you would write it, just explaining what works for you and what doesn't), I'm sure the WhatIF authors would love to have you. There's always a shortage of people willing to help with edits, if you're willing to help out the WhatIF crew. If you want to help out with this, PM me for access to the WhatIF section. That's especially true if you have any interest in at one point working with the canon team as either an author or editor, we definitely have a history of tapping new members from the non-canon writing group.

Of course, the reason everyone's dropping in for their weekly visit: new content. For this week, we have a bit of a holiday related piece from Bek. I know there are people who have been waiting eagerly for this one to roll around... so, here we go... "Silver Ghost, Golden Angel" Part 2. From Bek D. Corbin. Enjoy!

And for everyone, no matter your religion or background; have a warm, safe, and wonderful winter holidays. I won't name them all, but let's remember their common elements... the recognition of Light over Darkness, the affirmation that Winter will pass and Spring return. Celebrate your survival and the renewed hope that a new year brings. Grab yourself a cup of coffee, tea, hot cocoa, cider or mulled wine and join me at the fire. 

For those people who posted in the comments on the previous Front Page article since Monday, with concern that there might be site problems or Kristin problems... don't worry, it's fine and so am I. I fell asleep on Monday while sitting at my computer for several hours and missed getting a content update together... so Elrod pushed something into the Release list. I noted, offhand, that he hadn't posted any news or update announcement when I came in to get things up... but then it slipped my mind. Most of the canon authors 'should' have the ability to post Front Page News at will... but I don't know how many of them actually know that or know how to go about doing it (other than just editing the existing Front Page). So something just needed to be put up. But thank you for the concern for both the site and my well being. :)

If you haven't already found it, Monday's release for the week was the first part of Imp 4: "A Teacher's Tail" by Morpheus. As with the recent Elle stories from Elrod, the story moves us into the new Fall semester of the Gen 1 timeline... which we can refer to as Fall 07 or Year 2. Enjoy! More coming soon!

We mentioned last week that JG had made a visit. We're happy to announce that it was far more than just a quick stop in and he's been hanging out in chat with the authors all week getting caught up on who is going what, which characters are likely to interact with his stories and generally getting a feel for where the universe has gone in his absence. I'm sure I'm not alone in being grateful for his return... especially since he's already contributed to the continuation of his existing plot lines: here is the conclusion of the Artificer arc: "Ashes and Steel" ... which has been one of the most requested 'but what happened to' moments in our universe's history. Given the plans flying fast and furious on IRC last night, I wouldn't be surprised to see more from JG soon.

So, again, welcome back JG!

I just realized that it is November... already. Tomorrow everyone votes. In a couple weeks we eat Turkey and then the holiday decorations start going up... and another year will have flown by. It's not... surprising, I suppose. When we are young, a year is such a large amount of time compared to the body of our memories and experience... at ten, it's a whole tenth of our life, perhaps as much as twenty percent of our functional memory and experience. By our twenties, a single year no longer seems such a large factor... after all, a year only adds another 5-6% to the total body of our experience at that point... though we gain so much in our maturity/adulthood at that stage, as a year at twenty is perhaps a third of our total time on our own, outside of high school. But by our thirties, even leaving out our childhood years, a year is a small fraction of our total lifespan. By fortyfive or fifty, half of our lifetime has been as an adult and a new year worth of experiences is less than five percent of the time we've been an adult.. let alone been alive.

So the years, as we accumulate experience, seem to race forward ever faster... making it harder for a given moment to mean as much... for something new to overturn habits and experiences already engrained. Sad... and frightening... and worth contemplating. If we could discard years of our experiences... shed memories that aren't important to our nature but serve as anchors in time and create this perspective of new years flying by... could we regain our control over this passage of time? Turn the passage of a year into something meaningful again? A significant amount of time, in which each day, encounter, and idea is relevant in ways that are lost when held in perspective to a half century of living?

For your reading pleasure today, I'd like to bring up the next part (Part 2) of Nagrij's Fantasy piece for the Library. This section of "Dim Prisons and Drakes" runs from chapter 6 through chapter 9 of this piece. You can find a link to it over in the Latest Articles list at the top of the right hand sidebar, or in the Library section under Stories... in the sub-category "Unique Fantasy." Enjoy!