Welcome to the February 2009 Silverthought update. Happy Groundhog Day. And New Year. Merry Christmas. And don't forget to vote. Okay, sorry for the wait. We've been working frantically on some necessary improvements under ST's hood, but now that those are in order and now that the Pennsylvania Bastard Snow Rat has been scared away by his shadow, take some time over the next six weeks of winter hell to enjoy this fiction.

The February update features the last chapter of Out of Nothing by Thomas Henry Dylan and the first chapter of Mr. Head by Michael Gold. We have short fiction by returning writers Gayla Chaney, Alex Clark, Ken Dean, Joseph Hirsch, Chris Hlad, Kimberly Raiser, and Joel Van Valin, along with the ST debuts of Patrick Anderson Jr., David J. Batista, and Tim Lieder. You'll find grenades, cannibalism, Nazis, mercenaries, robots, ghosts, and multiple stabbings—everything from Mr. Head to Mr. Toes.

On the print front, I'm pleased to say that ST has received nearly five thousand queries since we opened for print submissions again in January. We've begun putting the 2009-2010 print lineup together. First up, the long-awaited Thank You, Death Robot anthology edited by Mark R. Brand, which you can expect in the spring. I've also accepted Brand's The Damnation of Memory, How It Ends by Scott Lyerly, Bliss: A Novella and Blood: The New Red by David S. Grant, Horror House Detective by Michael Gold, and Affluenza by David LaBounty. More announcements about the print division will soon follow, including a planned limited-edition horror collection, a women's collection edited by Becci Noblit Goodall, and perhaps the most heartbreakingly gorgeous sf novel I've read in years. Stay tuned for details.

Those of you wishing to submit material to our online or print divisions should peruse our updated submission guidelines closely. We've made some minor changes to simplify the process and clarify who we are and what we do. I'm talking to you, two hundred people who lied when they said they picked up an issue of Silver Thoughts and liked what they saw. Sure you did.

And now on a more serious note, if you didn't read "Strangedays" by Rhian Waller in our last update, you really missed out. You should read it now. You should also consider donating to Rhian's fundraising campaign for Amnesty International: http://www.justgiving.com/rhianwaller. She's going to shave her head. More information is available on the Facebook group "Rhian Goes Bald for Amnesty" at: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=46506923946. ST wishes Rhian all the best at her endeavor. I'd show my support by shaving my head, but if winter continues like this, I will have pulled the rest of my hair out in frustration by our next update anyway.

Enjoy.

—PEH