Dear Friend and Reader,
Short of the last few items, I’m packed up and ready to fly to Dublin tonight. This is the second year that I’ll be there for the holidays, marking the second time that Christmas morning will have a meaning for me, besides the usual Jewish ritual of Chinese food and movie theaters.
It’s been about five weeks since I last saw my girlfriend, and I’m really looking forward to some extended quality time with her; two weeks is a gift, a lot more than we’ve been getting these days.
As far as Planet Waves goes, the dynamic shifts in interesting ways when I work from the other side of the pond. We’re a spread-out team, and a certain rhythm has settled since I came back to New York in August. Eric and I are the early risers on the east coast, checking like finnicky parents to make sure each page looks beautiful before we send it out to you. This morning, we were chatting by 7:45, going over the Tuesday edition for Planet Waves Astrology NewsВ and ironing out the last-minute details. Anatoly, our web manager in Ukraine who never seems to sleep, dutifully altered the page as we hemmed and hawed.
Once my morning coffee has set in, Genevieve wakes up, and we share a bit of water cooler gossip. Sometimes we go on video chat and compare our bedhead before she dives into horoscopes and aspects. Throughout the day, I ask her astrology questions. Like last night, I asked her if Dolly Parton’s Capricorn with a Virgo Moon could explain her giant breast implants. (More on that when her birthday comes around in January.)
As the Sun rises across our continent-sized country, Shanna, then Fe, then Rahmana appear, emailing me with updates on their blogs and interesting headlines. Lately, the majority of the chatter has been about Next World Stories, our 2009 annual.В
Shanna has turned into an owl, emailing me in the middle of the night as she plows through one of our biggest features, a timeline from the last Pluto in Capricorn transit, which occurred in the 1700s when we were fighting the Revolutionary War.В
I know many of you may be thinking “snooze” on this one — I know I did — but wait until you read it, because it’s nothing like the way I was taught history in grade school. I’m learning things about George Washington I never knew, and about the affect Pluto in Capricorn had on the time period; it opened up this whole shift in how we think. The novel was introduced, people started questioning the church, we started a revolution!
On the modern side, Carol Van Strum, Fe, Genevieve and Eric are working on a timeline for Pluto in Sagittarius, a period we just left and were in since 1992, if I remember correctly. I just adjusted some technical parts of it this morning, and realized something really cool: partnership rights for same-sex couples emerged and gathered momentum during this period. Before 1992, Denmark was the only country offering legal protections for same-sex couples. Now, there are dozens.
We’re finally getting to the stage where writers are submitting their work, and I’ve started adding content to the Next World Stories pages; the actual product is beginning to take shape, which is always the most exciting part of a big project. It’s like working on a jigsaw puzzle, with thousands of scattered pieces and solid colors. But then the frame clicks together, and a few nice-sized chunks are formed…then snap, snap, snap!
I have to tell you, I love getting sneak peeks on things — that’s probably why I’m an editor, besides the fact that I get a guilty pleasure feeling out of correcting spelling mistakes. So I’ll drop a couple of hints about the good stuff coming from our writers. First off, Jeanne Treadway is brilliant. You may have seen her article Just Too Dang Much! on our site a few months ago. I don’t use the word “spitfire” very often, but it definitely applies to Jeanne. You’ll be hearing from her at the end of the week, when we begin our 10th anniversary celebrations.
I got a draft on her article for the annual, about how she made it through the last decade, late on Sunday night. All I was going to do was take a quick look for formatting problems and save it for another day. But I couldn’t. I had to read it, and I couldn’t stop until I finished. Jeanne has a real gift for writing; she’s personable, she’s funny, she’s touching. And she’s in the Next World Stories annual.
Then there’s Carol Van Strum, living out in the Oregon wilderness, sending me hilarious science fiction pieces written by her and her son Jordan, again, for NWS. They’re all wildly entertaining, but there’s one in particular that keeps popping in my head and making me laugh out loud while I’m in crowded places. It’s a mock interview written by Jordan, for a magazine called “Steroid Weekly.” Hang on, I’ll just show you one quick clip, but that’s it!
From Steroid Weekly, a newsletter dedicated to the interesting effects and evolution of legal steroid usage in the Enhanced Leagues. Steroid Weekly interviews Rex “The Pusher” Fallon, president of the Player Enhanced Sports Union.
S.W. : Mr. Fallon, why do they call you “the pusher” and how did you become president of PESU?
R.F.: I’m tha’ pusha’ ‘cuz I can push a lotta weight, wanna see?
S.W. : Er, no. I am aware of your strength.
R.F.: I got to runnin’ things when we had a tournament of fightin’ to see who could wup who. I’m too big to be hurt so it wasn’t hard to crush my opprah – uh – opponents.
S.W. : Yes, the incident was widely publicized. Didn’t the man die from his injuries?
R.F. : Yeah. But see he should’a just gave me the job. He knew the – uh – he took the risk.
S.W. : So you must have some good qualifications to have been given the job of president. What were they?
R.F. : ‘Cuz I’m bigger than everybody else and I wanted it more.
S.W.: That’s it?
R.F. : Yep.
Soon there will be an eight hour difference between me and the West Coast team. It can be challenging, but with such a talented and motivated group to work with, I know we’ll make it through and produce something entertaining, aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly. And I haven’t even mentioned the annual horoscopes that Eric is working on — one of the primary reasons we’re putting this project together.
We’re offering a range of options to purchase Next World Stories,В all of which can be found here. Jan. 5, 2009 is opening day, and I hope you’ll be there with us. We made it for you.
As I tend to say to my girlfriend before I board the big steel bird, I’ll see you on the other side.
Farewell from New York,
Rachel Asher
To see more from contributing artist Sean Hayes, click here.