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(here is a thread in which we can discuss what I posted in the blog)
Speaking as the assistant regional manager of Suspense & Decision magazine, I present you a quick summary of current status:
Grimfinger is still presumably on his sabbatical/hiaitus/self-imposed banishment. I have been unable to email or PM him.
Charles, I deeply and sincerely hope all is well with you and your family. Please feel free to update us or maintain radio silence, as you see fit. All is good with us, with your media empire, and with PBM in general. Having said that, I think I speak for all of us when I say "we'd love to hear from you!"
I have a full issue's worth of articles in my posession, edited and mostly formatted. I could post an interim version of the magazine using this content. Some of it is really good stuff indeed. If I had all the collateral that Charles has, I would gladly put Issue 10 together myself. What I am lacking is:
•Cover art
•Ads (we could either do an issue without ads, or rip them from last issue)
•Charles' multiple columns
•Charles' explicit permission to publish an issue
So, if anyone is reading this, what do you think we should do?
•Wait until we hear from Charles?
•Publish an interim issue without the fancy stuff?
•Try to create a full issue, filling in what we can?
•Full-on publication and here's some cover art and/or editorial ramblings to help out?
I will start a thread on the forum -- please post your thoughts there. The forum appears beset by some error messaging, but still works. You can browse threads and post while ignoring the errors. I haven't seen Charles on the list of "recently active members", but I have seen some of you. Please chime in there.
Which ALSO brings me to the question of how to help shoulder the load of Charles' large PBM media conglomerate. He has hinted that he might consider offloading some parts to other helping hands. Here are the main chunks -- please consider which of these you as a loyal member of the PBM community might want to help out with:
•Suspense & Decision magazine
•PlayByMail.net forum
•This blog
•PBM wiki
I post all this, obviously, without any consent or contact from Charles. I just thought it might be useful if we "loyal members" could try to rally ourselves to support the community and perhaps help
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Hello Ixnay,
and thank you for the initiative, I was also wondering what had happened to Grimfinger, there has been no warning of this and last time I spoke to him he seemed fine. I too hope he is well and it is nothing serious.
Regarding your suggestion, if you have enough material for an intermediate issue, I suggest that you go ahead and prepare it. From my understanding Charles never meant this whole enterprise as his exclusively own work, he was pushing and encouraging more people to participate, and in the end of the day he was doing it because none else would.
If you go ahead I can help with
1. Artwork
2. Ad & some short news for Oplon Games
3. perhaps an article of EaW (cannot promise, depends on the players)
Some of the columns Charles used to fill you might have to fill up yourself (like editorial), while since you posted this others might also send you what they send to Charles, plus their advertisements, giving you more material.
In short I can help somewhat for next issue, but I guess you will need more people to reply to this.
Good to hear from you anyway,
Makis
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Hi there Ixnay!
I too am worried about Charles' absence and hope that it is a temporary condition and that all will be well soon.
I would suggest trying to prepare the missing issue yourself, except that you seem to be missing some rather critical pieces. I think I'd give Charles a little more time to recover from whatever his problems are and at least give us some direction. If he could, for instance, send you what he has as far as already-submitted ads, articles, company news, formatting templates (which I may be able to help with one piece of), the cover page (if we can't do a decent rip of it), and anything else he has handy, then we could probably produce an issue without him that's a pretty reasonable facsimile of what he's been doing. Given that we can get that much information (or his return) I'd say to publish issue #10 as August as planned, and then skip September pending his return and restart numbering of issues whenever it can be resumed.
I don't have any available time myself to take on any of his major projects. I'm so behind and overloaded with other duties it's all I can do to submit ads and articles, but I intend to keep doing that as long as there's something I can say and a 'zine to say it in.
But perhaps Charles can reduce some of his own workload in the magazine itself. His assistant editor can perhaps continue to do much of the assembly work and Charles might reduce the number of articles and editorials that he authors himself. Surely such things take a significant amount of time and put him under a lot of stress. We (the PBM community) do seem to be contributing a pretty good volume of content for each issue, so perhaps not as much is needed from him on a regular basis? Maybe reducing some time commitment and stress in one area will help him better deal with any work he still needs to take care of himself.
I think it'd be great if his "loyal followers" could chip in on whatever they can and keep things going in his absence. I'm sure he would approve of any help he can get.
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I have counseled Grim that he was taking too much on, with looking for a monthly with 100 pages and no revenue. A bit too ambitious a project in my view. Especially when counting on unpaid writers to supply the content on that fast of a timetable.
Could some of us done more so far? Yes. But I find myself often working at 10pm myself, with not much revenue either. I believe I wrote an article for each of the first 8 issues.
On how to proceed, maintain momentum, my personal view is we give him some time, he regroups, and hope he goes to maybe 50 pages every other month, or quarterly, with more attention to the quality of the articles instead of the word count.
Of course, primarily I hope all is fine with Charles.
Rick McDowell
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Okay, it looks like that preview of the Issue 10 cover is a full-sized image, which means I can use it for publishing.
I will begin assembling Issue 10 this week. I have a full issue's worth of articles from Grim, except for Grim's own contributions. We'll just backfill. I have the page templates. And now I have the cover art. Here's what I need to do:
- contact anyone who had an ad in Issue 9 and see if they want to run it again in Issue 10
- complete the article submissions by adding images and text callouts as needed
- draft up an editorial post
If anyone would like to submit anything for Issue 10, please alert me here asap. I expect to get a draft done by the end of this week. Those of you who are running ads, please respond when I email you for status. I will post updates here on this thread as time permits. Hopefully we'll have Issue 10 published and in your hands within a week.
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Hi ixnay,
In a feeble attempt to help Charles with some article submissions I email him an article back on Aug. 12th. Not sure if that has been passed on to you. If not, and you are interested, let me know how to send it to you and I will do so. Regardless of your need or not, a big thank you for your effort in keeping this going. Truly a labor of love on Charles, you and the few others who spend time trying to make this go.
tony/nazareth
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It wasn't a feeble attempt.
No attempts at this sort of stuff are feeble.
I am trying to arrange for someone to fix the forum for us.
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(10-03-2014, 01:06 AM)Rick McDowell Wrote: I have counseled Grim that he was taking too much on, with looking for a monthly with 100 pages and no revenue. A bit too ambitious a project in my view. Especially when counting on unpaid writers to supply the content on that fast of a timetable.
Pah! Damned elf lover.
But, it's still good to see you chime in, Rick. I need a Pepsi. Does anyone have one?
(10-03-2014, 01:06 AM)Rick McDowell Wrote: Could some of us done more so far? Yes. But I find myself often working at 10pm myself, with not much revenue either. I believe I wrote an article for each of the first 8 issues.
On how to proceed, maintain momentum, my personal view is we give him some time, he regroups, and hope he goes to maybe 50 pages every other month, or quarterly, with more attention to the quality of the articles instead of the word count.
Of course, primarily I hope all is fine with Charles.
Rick McDowell
It will probably be the best thing that ever happened to the magazine, but that's just my opinion. Issue # 10 will get spit out, in due time. Barring death or disaster, I suspect that Issue # 11 will follow it, thereafter.
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Ixnay,
For the missing issue my cohorts and I had sent Charles:
1) An article
2) An ad
3) Episode 1 of a new story
4) Company news
If you're missing any of this, let me know (with an email address?) and I'll get copies sent right out to you.
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Tony -- it's "The Librarian", right? I've got it. And just to confirm, you want to use your first name only in the byline?
Davin and everyone else -- Charles has resurfaced, and I am working with him to get all the many bits and pieces lined up to assemble. Now that he's available, I will likely not have to do my own email-contacting campaign and can just get stuff straight from him. I will in all likelihood be assembling this issue myself, and if I can get everything I need I may get it done by the end of this weekend. We shall see...
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