A Home in Cyberspace

I’ve always wanted to be part of a group blog. I don’t know why, but I’ve always read posts in the group blogs I follow with a frisson of envy. Those writers, it seems, belong. They have friends and colleagues who want them. Those lucky people are part of a set. They are – almost by definition – the in crowd. And it sort of doesn’t matter what they say because, whatever they say is valued by their fellow group blog members. It adds a certain glamour to even the most mundane of posts. Their words glisten like a vampire in the noonday sun.

So you can imagine how I felt when my mate Meryl invited me to join her new group blog 42nd Parallel. Go on, imagine it – a grown man dancing around his office, the dog and cat running for cover, the shrieks of joy echoing from the granite escarpments all around him. It was pretty sad really. But not so sad as my acceptance email. (“Yeah, maybe. I’ll see if I can find time in my busy schedule. I’ll have my people call your people. OK?”)

Pathetic. But now I’m in. My first post has already appeared on the blog (beside that of the rather special Cassie Hart) and now Meryl can’t claim it was all a terrible administrative error and she meant to invite someone really clever and interesting. (Can she?) Now I’m going to rave about science fiction and rant about science and roar about writers I love and they can’t throw me out because, well, that would be mean, ’cause I always wanted to be on a group blog with glistening words and a cohort and all that.

So, please, join me on 42nd Parallel, subscribe to 42nd Parallel, and wallow in the musings of a group of SFF nuts who just want to create a space where being a half-crazed speculative fiction fan isn’t any reason to be excluded and ostracised.

The inaugural meeting of the 42nd Parallel team