Black Gate

Skelos magazine, launched as a result of a terrifically successful Kickstarter in 2016, is one of the best new magazines of weird fantasy on the market. Editors Mark Finn, Chris Gruber, and Jeffrey Shanks produced three of the first four promised issues — all of which look fabulous, and were well reviewed. But the fourth, originally cover-dated Summer 2017, has yet to appear, and after a year of delays and virtually no communication from the editors, there’s been a lot of open speculation around the fate of Skelos. Late yesterday Mark Finn posted a lengthy update with good new for dark fantasy fans.

Starting in 2019, we will resume publishing Skelos at a rate of two issues per year, during the Summer and Winter seasons… We will also pursue a more leisurely publishing schedule with regards to collections and original anthologies. Right now, there are two books in our hopper; a collection of Mythos Fiction by Don Webb, and a collection of Elak of Atlantis stories by Adrian Cole. We are very excited to bring those books out in 2019. Other original volumes and collections will follow and be announced, one at a time, as we can, and still keep our scheduled commitments.

As for the rest of this year: there’s not much left, but we are keen to finish and publish Skelos #4. Also, we are keen to fix/re-organize all of the ebook files so that they are standard and uniform and most important, all available. Once Skelos #4 is out, and the four issues have been secured and locked down in a digital format, we will turn our attention to publishing Skelos #5 and Skelos #6 in 2019, and Skelos #7 and Skelos #8 in 2020. Don’s book, Building Strange Temples, will be available in 2019, along with Adrian’s Elak collection. We will announce their on-sale dates in a timely manner… There are not enough places to read the things we like to read. Skelos was formed to address that, and we’d like to see it flourish.

We thank you for your patience. We will fix this, and try to do better going forward.

Speaking as a fan of the magazine, and one who’s been following the personal difficulties of Mark and his team with considerable sympathy, I’m relieved and impressed at the dedication of the entire team, and very much looking forward to the new issues. Read Mark’s complete Open Letter on Facebook here.

YA lit/comics magazine CICADA has folded effective August 31. It was part of Cricket Media, which also publishes Cricket, Ladybug, and Spider magazines. CICADA was an excellent market for YA fantasy short fiction for over 20 years, and its sudden loss is a blow. Team CICADA posted the following message on their website:

Dear members, contributors, and readers,

Our story began in 1998, and we like to think it’s been a good one — full of twists and turns, ups and downs, and a tasteful amount of werewolves and Vikings. Here’s the thing about all good stories, though: they have to come to an end when it feels right. We think that time has come.

As of August 31, 2018, we will be ending CICADA. It has absolutely been our honor to work with such an amazing community of authors and artists, and it has been our pleasure to share their work with our readers. We’ve always been so inspired by the creativity, kindness, talent, and courage of our online community. It isn’t easy to say goodbye, but we’re really proud of this publication and community, and it’s been an amazing ride.

The website will remain active until September 15, 2018, so we encourage our contributors and readers to download any digital files they may want to keep. We understand that you may have questions — please feel free to reach out to us at cicada@cricketmedia.com or on the forums. Subscribers will be contacted via email with details on refunds for the remainder of their subscription periods.

Thank you again to all our contributors, readers, and Slammers for being part of our story. We are so, so excited to see what you will create in the future.

CICADA had an excellent line-up of modern fantasy writers (and it looked great on my bookshelf). The magazine’s list of favorite writers included Nnedi Okorafor, Daniel Jose Older, Nalo Hopkinson, Kelly Link, Ursula Vernon, Sofia Samatar, Leigh Bardugo, Octavia Butler, and other genre stars. It advertised itself as a magazine “fascinated with the lyric and strange and committed to work that speaks to teens’ truths… Especially welcome: works by people of color, people with disabilities, LGBTQAI+ people, nonbinary people, and other marginalized peoples.” The website will come down on Sept 15; until then you can check it out here.