Hi All,
It’s great to be back. A few words, and a few questions for the EAP community . . .
As a lot of you know, I’ve just finished successful treatment for throat cancer. I was lucky. It was gnarly, but effective, though I’m still feeling the after effects, so I’m a bit slowed down.
If you’re interested in the process, I wrote about it in this issue’s Jam Today blog. Unsurprisingly, the thing that hit me the most was how my dining habits were affected. Every day life with my family, including all of our creative activities, always having been the most important thing to me. A cancer diagnosis only underlined that and set it in bold.
These things bring on some personality changes. Normally I wouldn’t have as many long pieces in this online magazine, but for some reason, I felt it was the right time for them. So check out my (rather long) short story, The Magician’s Wife, with themes of longtime marriage, care of women for other women, and the reality of love. Also Bruce E.R. Thompson’s lovely Does Chat GBT Dream of Electric Sheep?, originally meant to go in the canceled winter issue, but that really fits the theme of Half Magic. Science started in magic, and it continues its trajectory. Often it seems to be the weirder half.
Also, I urge you to read Jonah Kruvant’s The Armor You Built, from his upcoming book. What the alien has to say in there is dead on. And what EAP is all about.
Speaking of what EAP is all about, my question for you is: How would you like to see EAP: The Magazine in the future? It’s always been meant to be a place for alternative content to noodle around and try itself out (see Tom Ball, see Jim Meirose if you have any doubts about that), and for content about being actually human and taking joy in that. Poetry, under the watchful and lyrical eye of poetry editor Marissa Bell Toffoli, has found a home here. You’ll see there’s a lot of poetry this issue, since we’re playing catch up with the canceled one. And why not? There’s a lot of poetry in life, if only humans could be convinced to look.
Any ideas? Any thoughts you’ve had in an idle moment about what you’d like EAP to be? If so, sling ‘em over. I’m in the midst of picking up the brightly colored pieces of my pre cancer life and fitting them together into a new pattern, so now’s the time.
Meanwhile, welcome back. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart.