EDF’s One-Time-Only December Invitational

When we realized that we wouldn’t have a submission system until sometime in December — and therefore no stories to publish — we decided to do something special. It’s December, after all: a holiday season one way or another in many parts of the world, the end of the year, and a time to gather and celebrate.

Therefore, without further delay, we present EDF’s One-Time-Only December Invitational.

We reached out to some of the authors who’ve been part of EDF’s history, inviting them to send us a story for old time’s sake, and we opened up submissions to past and current editorial staff as well. The response has been incredibly moving, and all I can say is thank you. I’m in awe of the incredible authors who turned around and created something for us in record time, or found just the perfect thing in their files waiting for a home. I also deeply appreciate the efforts of those who tried to come up with something and couldn’t summon the muse in time, and the kindness of those who had to refuse due to other commitments but had such lovely things to say about EDF’s place in the writing community.

It has been exciting to read stories by my fellow editors (and rather terrifying to show them mine), so that’s another never-likely-to-happen-again special feature this month: we’re pulling back the curtain to show you what we ourselves can do.

To tell you all the truth, with the technical challenges we’ve been facing and all the difficulties in saving EDF’s archives and getting everything functioning again, the temptation was there to just shut it down. “It’s just one magazine,” one might say. “There are so many others.” But then we started talking to past authors about this December Invitation, and the love and support and encouragement in their responses has been absolutely inspiring. Maybe EDF isn’t just another magazine. Maybe we’re doing something special, even important. So we’ll do whatever it takes to keep this community alive.

The table of contents for this month is still a tiny bit fluid, so we’ll post that tonight or tomorrow once it’s finalized. For now, though, we’ll jump right in and get started with the first story of this most unusual EDF special event: “Dreidel of Dread: The Very Cthulhu Channukah” by Alex Shvartsman.

Thank you to everyone who has supported and encouraged us during this past month of chaos. It’s great to be getting back to publishing stories again. Lots of love to all of you, and enjoy the stories.

Sincerely,

Camille Gooderham Campbell
Managing Editor

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