A scheduled end to EMG-Zine

All good things come to an end, and EMG-Zine is no exception. It is, surprisingly, not with a heavy heart or with reluctance that I am announcing that we will be folding up our publication at the end of the year, but with a certain amount of joy, and a whole lot of pride.

The Tower card in the tarot deck is an uncomfortable card, dealing with failure, ruin, upheaval and sudden, brutal realization of falsehoods. It would be easy to take the theme of this month and the timing of this announcement as an admittance of failure and look at the closure of EMG-Zine as a disaster. I choose to do otherwise - I am deeply proud of what we've accomplished, and I am even more pleased that we were able to prove the 'zine financially solvent in its last year. By the end of this run, we will have produced 84 issues and run without breaks and only minimal delays (a day, I think, was the latest we ever released?), for seven years. We've published three amazing print anthologies, hundreds of articles and hundreds of pieces of fiction, poetry and artwork.

I look forward to ending on an unprecedented high note, and plan to deliver you the remaining six issues absolutely stuffed with the great advice, stories, poetry, artwork and reviews you've come to expect from us. Those of you with subscriptions that extend past the end of the year will receive offers of pro-rated refunds. Funds that have come in this year towards programming improvements will still be earmarked for that coding - with a focus on making our archives more search-friendly and accessible. The site will remain available for the foreseeable future, so that you can always come back and catch up on the issues you missed, or use it for research when you've got a business or technique question. There is the possibility, given enough interest, of running a Kickstarter campaign to fund a fourth volume of the Art of the Business of Fantasy Art, which would encompass the best of our last four years.

(On that topic, the previous anthologies are available for sale again!)

Sketch Fest

Stay tuned for the return of Sketch Fest on June 22-24!