Hopefully, if you were local to the area, you were able to come see me at the Highlands Fest in Eagle River on June 30; I will be out of the office until 2 July. (So artists, note that the deadline for the "Legends of the Sea" calendar and for the kids coloring book has been extended to that date, by a whole day!)

My computer story for the month (to match our theme) is one of horror and woe, but at least it had a happy ending! I upgraded my laptop with a 1 Gig stick of RAM... that was bad! It told me it couldn't find windows, and threatened to delete things and went into reboot loops and blue screens of death that petrified me. Luckily, the fine folks at Geek City in Fairbanks replaced the RAM, fixed the broken system restore that continued to cause problems, and put me back on track again. No data was lost, the new RAM is speedy, and I'm loving the upgrade to Photoshop and InDesign.

Also, I have backed up everything. Have you? Use the archive search to check out R. Bail's article on the Basics of Backing Up - it's free for any registered reader this month, not just paid subscribers!

Giftshop

We've got new artists! Welcome to Amanda Pearl Robison, Jennifer Rogers, and Jeff Johnson!

For those of you with high speed connections, boggle in wonder at the new View All gallery - thumbnails of every design available! It's a wonderful way to find new work that you may have missed.

The biggest complaint about coloring books that I get is that they're just too pretty to color. So, I've added a new option to all of them - buy two at a discount! Keep one, color one!

Speaking of coloring books, the Dark Art of Robin Nunez is apparently still delayed at the printer.

Portrait Adoption

Portrait Adoption also got some new galleries! Now you can view the pieces that are currently claimed as submitted descriptions (and perhaps submit your own!) as well as pieces that have already been adopted! Check out Portrait Adoption and the new artwork and artists, too!

EMG-Zine

Would you like to see EMG-Zine continue for another year? Do you like to edit and answer emails? Megan is retiring, and I'm swamped! If you think you'd be right for the job (or would like to volunteer in any other way!), please apply using this form. Thanks!

The Anthology proofs look stunning... except for a few minor problems, like being entirely out of order! So there will be a few changes before the final run - I'm still hopeful about making that July 15 date!

As always, be well!

~Ellen

PS: Apologies for the gross overuse of exclamation points... I am writing this before a big trip, and that's always bound to generate some extra !!!

Art by Mark Smith.