Team Update: Powering up the Warp Drive [2018]

a Team Update by the Crow.

POWERING UP THE WARP DRIVE

It has been exactly one year and a day since the deadline for our very first Call for Submissions passed. And it’s about time we all had a sit down so that we can talk about it. There’s a lot to be said.

In the time since our second round of re-write requests were sent out, we’ve had some significant troubles behind the scenes, and have therefore had severe issues with keeping up with the promises we had made back then. I’ve never been a fan of excuses, but in this case, we have egg on our face. But enough about that. On to what’s important: the fact that we’re wrapping it all up, at long last.

We’ve been stopping and starting with our intended return to our regular routines for months, while we tried to figure out how things worked this time around, but I’m happy to announce that we have finally returned. And now, it’s time to deliver on those promises we made so long ago.

Our authors have been incredibly patient with us, and some have yet to be sent their contracts, but we’re on the ball again and will be burning through the formalities as fast as we can. However, in order to clear up any further confusion, here’s a quick timeline of when we’ll be able to get around to the authors we have not been in touch with:

• The Azure-Winged Magpie and I will continue to be busy with our day jobs up until the end of July, but will have the time to handle a few reviews so that we can ‘power up our Warp Drive‘. (By that, I mean we intend to drive our daily views up to our previous heights, since it would be unfair to our authors to publish their stories whilst we have so few bums on seats.)
• We are setting a hard date of the 20th of July for the date of our first publication, since it’s been sorted out and is just waiting in the pipeline until we get the rest of them polished-up and ready for display.

And just like that, allow me a moment to give the command.

Engage.

And now, for the second time, allow me to introduce our first two stories, and the authors who wrote them. They are:

The Lighthouse by JOE BUTLER

and

The Third Time Around by CHARLES ARTHUR

Now that I’m back in the chair, and the Azure-Winged Magpie and I have achieved “Star-Peace”, expect these stories on the 20th and the 27th of July. As promised: an individual .pdf of the stories shall be made available for free download once our authors have green-lit our print-editions.

To add to that: as part of this ‘powering-up’ phase, we’ll also be rebooting our social media presence starting this weekend (spearheaded by the Azure-Winged Magpie — as always) and involving ourselves with a few more “crossover” events, if possible. The moment that we’re back on social media, we’ll be getting in touch with our authors so that we can get ahead of our publication dates and make sure that the contracts are settled as soon as possible.

Once again: we would like to extend our sincere apologies to all of our authors, and our sincere thanks for their patience. This has taken far too long, our friends.

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UPCOMING CONTENT

As of the moment, we’re going to busy ourselves with rounding up the Marvel Cinematic Universe as it stands so far, and drop in a few more movie reviews to pass the time, since it’ll be easier to work with something ‘safer’ until we have more time on our hands.

Along with these reviews, we’ll be taking a few looks at the 2018 FIFA World Cup, currently being played in Russia, from time-to-time (starting today).

We’ve recruited some ‘allies’ to help us with our current work on The Corvid Review, to help smooth the rebooting phase, so a few new (and non-avian) names might appear upon occasion as we build up steam. And I’d like to formally extend our thanks to them for jumping in with the assists.

From a quick look, it seems stepping our foot back in the water has already caught some notice. That’s nothing but a promising start. It seems the reboot might be more successful than I’d imagined, following our spectacular collapse. But isn’t that what they say? That it’s not so-much about the falling, but the getting back up again?

We’ll be in touch soon. Hope you’re all keeping well.

— Crow out.