Editorial

The Desire is back. Thanks to modern communication (what did we do before we had email?), H. Jekyll told me that Mat Twassel asked Mark Aster for permission to use the JoD name and any of his material published in other issues, and Mark replied to Jekyll (and to Twassel too, I think), saying that he gave us such permission, which Jekyll told me back. So please, Jekyll, tell Twassel to thank Aster for me. (I suppose before we had emails we just picked up the phone and called people directly. How boring.)

The Desire is back

The last number, v2n1, was published in early 2001, in a different format from the other four that composed Volume 1. I could write that the world and the Net were different back then, but I know that you are thinking that yourself. With this new issue the JoD gained a face lift, which will generate, I hope, only a dozen "I liked the previous design better" emails. There's a new logo and new colors, but the overall layout is the same, and it's still simple, clean and lean. And, of course, filled with interesting things to read.

The proposal of the JoD is to present you with something that you won't find in your favorite site or newsgroup; not only (good) stories, but also essays and interviews, and who knows what else will come. I have to thank all the people that took their times to write contributions for this number. Thank you very much; my job was only to send emails asking for them. A mostly feminine cast provided the stories in this first issue: Esu Migabe, Crimson Dragon and Suzie XX give us three very different stories. Esu Migabe's story is little gem about romance and desire; Crimson comes with her unique, delightful style, and Suzie XX comes with a more directly erotic approach. I'm pleased to have Denny Wheeler debutting his fiction, after many years of ASSD-ing, in this issue, which is a great honor for me. The final touch comes from Yotna El'Toub, who wrote a beautiful poem that surely will be stolen by lovers here and there.

The interviews in this issue, carried by H. Jekyll, are with two people who were major players in giving us what we have: Eli the Bearded, who was moderator of a.s.s.m. for a long time, and Lazeez Jiddan, the man behind storiesonline.net. Thank you both, for what you did and for the interviews.

The essays tackle different points. Bradley Stoke tries to explain why we write; Jekyll talks about deirdre and the festival; Franz Kafka starts a column on online writers of the past.

We were supposed to have many many illustrations, drawn by Erographer—but he had unexpected problems soon after the first sketches were submitted to me. I preferred to keep those three illustrations than to have none at all. Let's hope Erographer finds time to help with the next issue.

To close this editorial, I'll say that I find it interesting that, no matter how pragmatic people are, they believe in coincidences. I've talked about this subject with all kinds of people; gardeners, lawyers, engineers, doctors, scientists; atheists and religious people, they all believe that there's something else besides pure randomness, though each one gives a different explanation or name to it. Whether that's true or not I'll leave for some other ezine to decide, but it's interesting that deirdre played a major part in Volume 1, Number 4—the last "traditional" issue of JoD—and now she's back in this issue, 6 years later, and the idea of making her festival was linked to the idea of resurrecting this Journal. I hope to have a festival for every new issue of the JoD, with the help of H. Jekyll, who was the main force behind deirdre's festival—and of remarkable help with this Journal in general.

I think that what has been written about deirdre so far surpasses by large the size of her own work. I sometimes wonder if she has kept up reading a.s.s.*, smiling at some people's comments, or terrified that we're still talking about her. It's a bit ironic that perhaps the most private author to post to a.s.s. is also the most commented one. She's been a constant in Celeste's comments, pops up periodically in threads of a.s.s.d; PleaseCain has written an essay about deirdre, published in JoD v4n1, and now H. Jekyll wrote another one, published in this issue. Yet nobody seems to ever emailed her directly.

Why the fascination? At a first glance, there's nothing remarkable about her work. All her stories are the same: told in first person, the narrator finds himself (or herself) suddenly in a completely unexpected, sexual situation, and he (or she) becomes submissive (with some interesting exceptions). The narrator can't think straight, doesn't wonder why that is happening, why everybody is behaving like that. Kafka in lust? No, in Kafka there wouldn't be orgasms, and they would be complete nightmares. deirdre's prose is dry, with short sentences, only the absolutely necessary descriptions, plenty of dialogs; it feels as if a story told to us by a friend in a cafe. They often don't end, leaving the narrator alone in the midst of his strange situation; but there's nothing implicit. We know his fate, we just don't know what will happen after he meets it.

IMHO, what makes deirdre's stories attractive is the contrast between the almost childishness of the prose allied to the intense sexuality that lies just around the corner. All of her stories could happen, needing little more than two or three people behaving psychotically. Maybe there is some sort of deirdre's club, whose members act like her characters. Would you like to be in one of its meetings? "It is a `nineties thing' to accept your own fantasies knowing full well you would hate them in real life," deirdre wrote in the header of Cabin. Maybe this will be the motto of this century, as we play games that makes us killers without leaving our chair, or watch movies for fun that would terrify us if they were real—instead of having flying cars and trips to the moon.

Before I go: thanks, ASSTR, for hosting this Journal. ASSTR is and will always remain free, but it needs your help to provide this service. All donations go completely toward the upkeep and improvement of the site and are tax deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law. Kind reader, consider a donation.

Enjoy this issue. With a little bit of luck there'll be another before another five years pass again—if it depends on me, this is only the first of many issues to come. Perhaps if you all be nice little boys and girls and tell our outstanding writers how much you appreciated their stories, they will keep writing. I want to be the first one to do that: thank you, my friends. There's no price to having so many good things to read.

Antheros - antheros at gmail . com