by Brian Peters and Mary Anne Mohanraj
(10/4/00)
We celebrate a full two years on the Web this month -- nearly an eternity in Web time, and a thing very hard to imagine when this magazine began. Clean Sheets remains solidly a creature of the World Wide Web -- there is no office address, no business phone, no printing presses, no desk in a room where it can be said, "here, more than anywhere, is where Clean Sheets really exists." Instead, we have an entirely unpaid staff of twenty scattered across three continents, a home on a rented server, and the very best of readers around the globe. Only the Web could make that possible.
As you know if you've been reading us for a while, or as you can see if you've gotten to know us recently by delving through our archives, Clean Sheets is an extrordinary mosaic. We are all manner of erotic short stories, a rich tangle of erotic poetry, a sweeping pattern of erotica reviews, an array of varied articles, an extensive gallery of images and graphics, a growing resource for sexual products, and the best erotic bookstore on the Web. We are all of the precision and imagination of a really talented and diverse staff, present and past. And we are all of the varied impressions and feedback we receive from you, our treasured readers.
One constant in that pattern has been our Editor-in-Chief Mary Anne Mohanraj. Mary Anne is the guiding energy that brought many of the staff to Clean Sheets, that attracted a lot of writers to submit pieces to us, and that probably attracted a lot of readers to give us that critical "first look." But two years of constant attention to the magazine is a long time indeed, and Mary Anne will be moving to the more contemplative role of Senior Editor as we move into our third year.
A note from Mary Anne:
It's been a challenge and a delight, working on Clean Sheets. The first piece of the mosaic was laid when a few writers got together and started talking about the kind of erotica magazine they'd like to see on the net. It sounded like a great idea, and with the help of many writers, readers, and others, we managed to create the magazine you now read. I've really enjoyed the entire process, from the first creation to the current incarnation, and I feel honored to have been able to shepherd CS through its first two years. It's been a pleasure bringing you some of the finest erotica and sexuality writing available; thank you for reading with me.
I've recently started two new projects: a Ph.D. in fiction and literature, and a speculative fiction magazine, Strange Horizons. I'm also getting deeper and deeper into the current set of stories I'm writing which I fear may turn itself into a novel if I'm not careful. And there are rumors that I may be editing a new anthology soon -- given the way Aqua Erotica took over my life last fall, I know this project will probably do the same. With all of this going on, I knew that I wouldn't be able to give CS the attention it deserves from its Editor-in-Chief; to be honest, I've been pretty absent for the last several months, given the press of other commitments.
Luckily, Clean Sheets' extrordinary staff have held down the fort beautifully in my distraction. And I realized recently that Clean Sheets would be better served if I stepped back a little, focused down, and handed over the reins to someone else. As of October 1, Susannah Indigo has taken over as Editor-in-Chief, and I know that she'll do a stellar job. She's a terrific fiction writer in her own right, and I think you're going to love seeing what pieces she adds to the CS mosaic.
This anniversary we present, as we did a year ago, a month long thank you to our readers in the form of short stories, poems, and non-fiction by our versatile Clean Sheets staff. We're sure that you'll love the reading nearly as much as we loved the writing. We also present a serial story begun last week and continuing week by week to the end of this month. And we're introducing a new, once and occasional section that we're calling Exotica, showcasing all the too-good-not-to-publish stuff that's simply too short, too quirky, too free-form, or just too off-the-beaten-path to fit elsewhere in the magazine. We hope you'll love every bit of the anniversary month, and we hope you'll be with us for years to come -- when this second anniversary month seems a thing of the glorious past.
