Dear Readers,
We all know things here on the Lands of Dream website have been slow. Much of this is due to the fact that our good friends and portal-makers, Jonas and Verena Kyratzes, happen to be trapped in one of Urizen’s major economic centres, and finding the experience rather depressing. I shudder to think what it must be like! But now The Sea Will Claim Everything is about to be re-released onto some sort of steam-based platform (you still use steam technology in your world?), progress is being made on The Council of Crows, and both Jonas and Verena would very much like to put more people in touch with the Lands of Dream again.
Knowing they can’t accomplish this task all by themselves (I just write updates), they’ve decided to get together a proper editorial team! I’m going to introduce my new friends here:
Henry Trollweather – Editor
Henry Trollweather is best known as a fiction writer (my favourite book of his is In the Burrows Under the Tree of the World), but he’s always getting involved in different projects, like helping R.L. Smith create a transubstantiated version of Ithaka of the Clouds. He currently lives in Hyperborea, where it’s really cold, so I guess he has a lot of time on his hands. Anyway, he’ll be helping coordinate the site, finding interesting writers to contribute articles and reviews and stories, and generally coming up with ideas. He’s interested in pretty much everything and has read more books than anyone I know, so that shouldn’t be too hard.
Jimmy Caballus – Investigative Reporter
Jimmy is grumpy and I’m a little scared of him, but he does great work. He exposed a major corruption scandal in Mag Mell, investigated the unconstitutional use of military troops in the Land of Plenty, and covered the fall of Lagonia is grisly detail. He’s as tough as they come, but from what I hear, he also has a passion for music, and may be writing some reviews for the site.
Lin the Liberator – Literary Enthusiast
Lin is a really famous hero in her homeland, the Kingdom of the Enigmatic Snakes, although not that many people know about her in the rest of the world, because everything that happens in that kingdom is kind of hard to understand. (They don’t even have a king, I think!) When she’s not fighting for freedom, she loves to read novels and poetry, so she’s decided to share some of her favourite works with us, as well as tell you all about new releases. She refuses to be called a critic, preferring instead the term “enthusiast.”
This Robot – Function Unknown
We don’t know what it’s called or why it’s shown up on our website. One morning I was just polishing some pixels and suddenly there was this bummed-out robot. It eats electricity and occasionally mumbles to itself. Since it seems to like company, we’ve decided to let it stay here and just see what happens.
The Purple Devourer – Food Critic
Instead of consuming all in his path, the Purple Devourer will share all his food-related wisdom with us! I think that’s lovely, especially since I’m terrible at picking restaurants. I always go for the ones that have nice-looking garbage, and very frequently there’s a reason all those leftovers ended up there. What else should I add? Hmm. Well, the Purple Devourer is quite mysterious, so I don’t know where he’s from, or really even what sort of being he is, but I know he enjoys funk, hip-hop, and games about farming.
Sotira Ulyanov – Historian
Sotira is one of the two fish that were multiplied by Jesus, so now there’s actually several thousand of her. This one has picked a surname inspired by her radical communist beliefs, and studied history under the legendary Kohlrabian Dialecticus, who may also be contributing some writing himself. Sotira currently spends most of her time in the sea surrounding the Fortunate Isles, but she likes to travel a lot and considers herself a cosmopolifish.
Pod – Podcast Expert
Henry is quite excited about the idea of doing some podcasts, as he is a big fan of the radio, so who could be better to help us with that than the very inventor of the podcast, Pod the Mushroom! He won’t be podcasting himself, but he’ll be helping out with all the various technical aspects of recording and broadcasting. Pod currently lives on the Chelonian Mountain, where he is working on a documentary about moss.
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What does all this mean for you, dear reader? Well, it means updates won’t be so sparse anymore! You can come here and hang out with me far more often. Like every week! And then you’ll be able to use those portals and transubstantiated stories to experience all kinds of cool stuff!
Oh, and remember that you can go like the Lands of Dream page on the information-sucking parasite called Facebook, and you can follow Bob the Spider on the failing corporate outrage machine called Twitter. He never posts anything useful, though, so I don’t know why you’d want to do that. The important thing is to remember your friends in the Lands of Dream and come visit every now and then. It’ll be fun!
Yours truly,
Julian the Announcement Fox