Gentle Reader,

Firstly, we would like to wish you a most pleasant new year and hope that all your endeavours come good this year. Unless of course, you are hellbent on world domination and tyranny, in which case we merely offer you a pleasant new year.

This is, of course, the time of year when television programming is chock full of “repeats” and we have of course been similarly engaged, repeating two stories for chronological accuracy. “All well and good,” I hear you cry, “but when do we get something new?” Fear not, dear Reader, for that hour is nearly upon us. Oh yes! In just one week’s time we will be publishing the first instalment of an exciting new story, “The Clockwork Conjuror”. Suffice to say, and without any of these accursed spoilers that one trips over all the time, it concerns a Conjuror with a deep interest in clockwork. Is that not a theme “par excellence” for our little literary venture? “Why yes,” I hear you cry, “that sounds like exactly the sort of thing I would enjoy. But – I am afeared that two episodes a week will simply be too much excitement. I have a fragile temperament and am subject to paroxysms of nervous palpitations.” Well, dear Reader, we understand your dilemma and we can reassure you that we at the Benthic Times take your nerves very seriously. Indeed, we often wonder about the sanity of people who read these pages. To mitigate the chance of nervous exhaustion, we have decided to reduce our usual break-neck publishing pace to once a week. This should give all our readers the chance to recover from the tremulous sensations our stories can provoke.

And with that happy news, we will take our leave. Until next week and… The Clockwork Conjuror…

Paul Michael, Esq

Victorian Desk – edited in Prisma App – Mononoke