Dear Readers,

Welcome, and thank you for logging into another issue of Digital Dragon Magazine.  We are excited to be bringing you our 9^th issue.  It truly seems like a milestone with each new issue, and we are looking forward to throwing a party at thirteen.  If you haven’t noticed, we’ve had changes around here at DDM, and this February issue is no exception.  We have decided to try to do away with the twice-a-month updates, and publish the magazine in its entirety around the fifth of every month.  We will team this up with the new PDF version of the magazine and several of its new features, including the new time warp feature, where we go back and review some of the novels that have made this all possible.

I’ve been thinking a lot about over the past couple weeks about what we are doing with Digital Dragon Magazine, and eventually all of the projects of Diminished Media.  If you follow my personal blog at all, you’ll know that my local bookstore recently closed and how it, at least, shows the changing face of print media.  Gone (or going) are the little local bookstores where the massive publishing houses show their wares to the general public.  And the knowledgeable booksellers to push you towards writers you may not have heard of?  They are disappearing as well.   In their place, we are left with cold, impersonal book giants, where you’re far more likely to find someone who understands coffee than books, or the online book giants like Amazon, where you can buy everything under the sun but have no one to guide you. 

This is where we at Digital Dragon step in.  It's exciting to me, the way we are able to introduce new readers to up-and-coming writers through short stories, book reviews and interviews, as well as help guide people to the family-friendly fiction that they love.  This month is truly no different, as we feature a short story by Grace Bridges.  Grace has been a long-standing friend of Digital Dragon.  She is a writer and runs a "small press" publishing company in Splashdown Books, which also looks to promote new writers and their family-friendly works.  We at DDM are truly excited to be bringing you Grace Bridges this month.

We will also be bringing you the newest update in the very popular Windrider serial, written by Becky Minor, as well as the second part in a short serial Ashlynn, by the oft-published Melanie Ann Billings.  These serials will be teaming up with short stories by Walt Staples, C. Michael Fontes, and Lyn Perry publisher of Residential Aliens; as well as interviews, reviews, and more.  All in all, I think with the work of DDM, and other similar magazines, though the bookstores are going away, books will not die.  Stories will not go silent; instead we are heading to a greater future then we could have ever imagined.

So sit back and enjoy DDM this month: check out the writers, and then, let me encourage you look at what else they're doing.   Follow the links to their personal pages.  Look up some of the other stories they’ve written, consider buying their books, and embrace the changing face of the written word.

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