Welcome to 2018!

Welcome to 2018
 
I’m so excited for this year! Our last issue marked five years of this wild project—and to be honest, I never expected From Sac to last this long. Life is at the very least unpredictable, and often time-consuming in areas you’d rather not devote your time. But a man’s gotta eat. And apparently so do his kids. Who knew?

My point: I am grateful for the opportunity to work on From Sac and to be on this wild adventure.
 
Elison and Tess would agree with me when I say that the INSANITY issue last year was by far our best issue yet. Now that we’ve figured out how to make this all work within the confines of our hectic schedules, the process is much smoother. Plus, it turns out that people are starting to notice From Sac, even if just a little, so that we now get hundreds of submissions a year—I don’t mind the extra work, this is exactly what I hoped would eventually happen.
 
If you haven’t read INSANITY yet, be sure to order a copy on Amazon. It’s a fantastic read, and it helps the three of us continue funding From Sac. Seriously, the sales pay for hosting the site and allowing us to provide contributor copies to our wonderful authors and artists.

But most importantly, I could not be more excited about this year’s theme. We are trying something a little different than what we’ve done and we’ve seen others journal do. The theme for 2018 is

VOICES

Sound like our others themes? There’s a catch: this theme has two layers (like a cake or something):

• Layer 1 (most important and best tasting by far): We are only accepting voice recorded submissions from our authors. That’s right: only audio. Text is wonderful, and writers perform magic with just language. Unfortunately, no matter how talented the author, everything a person reads is read by the weird narrator who lives somewhere between the ears and whispers to us whenever it’s too quiet. One of my hopes, among many regarding this theme, is that intended rhythms and intonation will be preserved and executed exactly as the author’s narrator.
  
• Layer 2 (also delicious): the concept of VOICE. We are all filled with voices, bombarded throughout our days with gobs of voices vying for out time and attention—both those that are sought out and those that are invasive. Sometimes I can’t tell the difference between my voice and the voices others around me. I am interested in those voices, how they affect us, what we choose to listen to or ignore, and what we are adding to the world.

 
Like I said, it’s going to be a great year! I’m excited for all that we are doing here and From Sac, to see how authors interpret the theme, and to just see what the rest of the world is going to do and be.