Hello reader. We hope you are doing well and staying safe out there. This week we don’t have much going on, which is a good thing I suppose. Our submission deadline is November 23rd at 11:59PM, and our livestream just happened. So there really isn’t anything happening.

With that said, something fun DID happen. Our livestream! It was a lot of fun, thank you to everyone who tuned in. It was fun to get on camera and chat about a work we spent months completing. Thank you to our wonderful contributors who sent in readings as well. We were happy as always to showcase that to our audience.

We hope we can do more livestreams in the future. In 2026 I’m going to push for more because they’re a lot of fun. They’re also a lot of work, but it’s very rewarding. Below I’ll go a little behind the scenes on how it all came together.

So this is the third livestream we have put on. We did our first one back in June 2023. Our second stream was in November for the launch of Issue No.7. Unfortunately, we were unable to come together to have one for our 8th issue. But we did not make that same mistake for Issue No.9.

I have a lot of livestream experience, hence why I wanted to do the show back in June 2023. I am usually playing videogames by myself, so bringing in guests is an entirely new challenge. I use an open source software called OBS. It’s an amazing resource that has only improved in usability over the years. From there I can be producer, moving between different scenes with ease. This time I made scenes with single cams, that I would switch to whenever an editor was speaking solo.

We had our share of tech issues. The Wednesday before we did a tech run so I could make sure everything looked and sounded good. That meant making sure videos were placed correctly and that everyone’s audio was balanced. But of course, tech issues love to wait for the big show. Angels internet was dropping in and out constantly, so he was being booted out every time his internet died. Also, his audio was CRAZY. I didn’t sound like that on Wednesday. Why do computers just change settings out of nowhere? One second your mic is working, the next it’s just not? And what’s the solution to that? No clue!

Anyways, we got to introduce the audience to our newest member, Valerie Vargas, so that was exciting. It did feel a bit mean to bring her on and then a few days later tell her that we were all going to be on camera to talk for two hours. But she did great and I’m glad she was able to join us!

I also edited the videos that went with the readings, which I have done before. But this time I caught a few typos after I put the graphics together which was very annoying. I make the first layer of graphics in Canva, then I export it and add the audio in Clipchamp. If there are multiple pages to a piece I have to time the page changes to the recordings which does not actually take as long as it sounds. I also made an opening credits sequence. I like the little theatrical flourishes. We’re a litmag, but the fact that we have an audio visual component is very important to me. I think it blends well with our mission, and I hope to do more and more of it.

Okay, I think that’s all behind the scenes I can think of. I may do a separate blog post going more in depth.

That’s going to do it. Next weeks newsletter might be similarly light due to the fact that submissions will have just closed and there isn’t really much in the pipeline. We will have a, “Meet the Editor,” post for Valerie sometime in the next week, so be sure to take a peek at our social media throughout so you don’t miss it. We also added her to our Masthead if you want to learn more about her now.

And if you haven’t please watch and enjoy the recording from our livestream. I apologize in advance for how much louder the intro is compared to the rest of the video. Balancing audio is...annoying.

Thank you so much for reading (and watching) reader. Have a great week. Don’t forget to submit your work! And spread the word! Your support means the world to us. Thanks again for being here and for being a part of the work we are doing. We’ll see you in two weeks. Take care.