I’ll be honest.

The original idea behind this wasn’t mine. I stole it from Warren Ellis. Or maybe he abandoned it. Either way, it was his first.

Here’s what he had.

quick idea notation

ROTOR
(placeholder name, no domain available)

one site, five writers, five weekdays (five RSS feeds). every day each writer posts something new – either a piece of a serial, or a short fiction, or an article. Under 500 words, ideally (probably 100-200 words is the ideal), but whatever. Each writer is therefore, yes, generating content for free – but each writer’s sequence goes POD-book when it’s generated enough words, the spine and back of the book also bearing the ROTOR mark. And then start again. Or bail out and free up a slot for another writer, whatever.

(tumblr version of same: one writer, one illustrator, one photographer, one musician, one video/filmmaker = five slots = one POD DVD every six months or whenever)

#thinkingoutloud (nothing I’ll ever have the time to do, so I throw it out into the wild)

I liked the idea. Mainly because I’m a masochist who likes bad/good ideas.

After the idea stuck with me for a day or two, I started asking around, figuring that no one would want to be a part of this.

I was wrong.

Within a day of sending out feelers, I had the five to run the site with. Plus enough extra to be able to open the weekends up to all of the other creative people we know.

And that was the original plan. And I think it worked out well. We created a damn lot of content. Just short of 300 posts in our first year.

But, things changed. I’d burned through all the creative people I knew, and trying to coax new content out of them was a full time job, and one that I didn’t relish. I’m sure I was annoying some of them with my hand constantly out.

So, the weekend guests were dropped. Leaving just the five of us, and while there were occasional changes in people or content, five people sitting in a room doing the same thing over and over again probably gets boring for everyone else.

Which is why we’ve changed the way we do things around here.

The doors of The Great and Secret Thing have been thrown open.

We’re no longer a repository of old libraries, hidden tomes, and secrets. We’re  a dusty, traveled letter, read, reread and passed through many hands. We’re still The Great and Secret Thing, but we’re no longer gnostic in our secrets. Now it is all about sharing each of our secret talents with the world.

And we want you to be a part of that.

Some things are still the same, though. Our Monday – Friday crew are still here and going strong.

Oh, we’ve finally broken up the boy’s club with our new fire-headed Friday poet, Ashley.

Monday – Zachary Whitten, short fiction & serialized narratives
Tuesday – Brandon Dill, painfully gorgeous photography
Wednesday – Ben Powers, original musical compositions
Thursday – Pat Guarino, webcomics & illustrations
Friday –  Ashley Roach, poetry and beautiful words

Cheers,
//–Zach