The making of Masks & Mirrors...

I had wanted to feature Heather Connelly's series of mask-like paintings for a while and eventually came up with the title for this issue when Heather sent me her Mirror poem. A big thank you to the technical team who got the scanner working otherwise we wouldn't have been able to show you Heather's creativity.


When we opened to submissions last year we received an email from Enerico sending us a poem in error! He hadn't meant to send the poem to us at all but to me it summed up the meaning of Masks & Mirrors in a telling, succinct way. I persuaded him to let us publish it and we then received Claudia's poems along with Freya's musing (not an Amusing as the technical team originally thought!) Jenny sent us her creepy but ultimately positive short story and it felt as though the issue was coming together.


Katie's review of Uglies came across as an interesting comparison to Jenny's story so all we had to do was determine which of JBH's photographs to use.


We really thought we had it nailed, but something seemed to be missing. We got distracted by life in general and felt a great reluctance to finalise the issue as it really wasn't quite there yet. Our self-imposed deadline came and went and we slowly started finalising the 'zine, re-arranging the pictures around the writing...


And then...


Then Freya emailed us with an Elfje by JulesPaige. We had never heard of an Elfje before (if you want to find out more click on SimplyElfje to the right of the main page) but we loved the poem. It complimented the poetry we'd already chosen. Shortly after that Freya sent us two of Elizabeth Leaper's poems and everything fell into place. These were what we had been waiting for!


Elizabeth expressed her surprise that we had accepted both her poems for publication as they basically say the same thing. Yes, they do, but in a different way. When I read her poems I felt as though I was looking into a vanity mirror which gives you three reflections of yourself. It's the same reflection but all three are different.


And then we discovered that Elizabeth had written her poems in response to JulesPaiges' Elfje. Talk about organic creativity! With Elizabeth and JulesPaiges' poems in place we realised that Freya's poem Phantom now fitted into the overall structure of the 'zine. (We'd originally put it to one side, not sure that it would fit in).


So here we are - Masks & Mirrors. All the creative people have done their hard work and we've drawn it together to make it a whole. What do you think of it?


If you don't already subscribe and would like to read the April issue, please send an email to EOTE  with Subscribe EOTE in the subject line.


Warmest regards


Anna
The Editor

The April Contributor's web site list is on the right hand side of this page. Please be sure to visit their sites for inspiration.