Welcome all to November.

As we reached our last issue for 2012, I look back at all we’ve achieved this year.

A big thanks to all who have supported us with their incredible images, narratives, and stories about themselves. We’re moving onwards and upwards for SQ Mag and we could not do it without your ongoing interest and contributions.

Our eye-catching cover this month comes to us courtesy of a very good friend of the editor, Steven Thor Gunnin. He’s a graphic designer from Illinois whose work I had the pleasure of being introduced to while he completed his Masters here in Australia. He’s been published in a number of anthologies, including Elements of Time: Past, Present, Future and Elements of the Soul. He lives with his wife Lucinda, who is also a writer, and cat Rain.

In this edition we follow up with Gary McMahon, who tells us a bit more about how his life influences his writing and some insights into his method. This Yorkshire author has written many short stories and novels, such as Rain Dogs, Hungry Hearts, Pretty Little Dead Things, Dead Bad Things and the Concrete Grove trilogy.

For your reading pleasure in Edition 5 we have Azurewrath by Esme Carpenter. Esme is a published author with IFWG Publishing, with her young teen fantasy Against the Elements released earlier this year. We also have the donations of some great short fiction from two of our authors to be published next year. Sadly, this is the last edition of our serial, Avoiding the Searchers, kindly donated by M.F Burbaugh. We hope if you enjoy their stories, you might consider heading over to the IFWG website and check out their books.

Our selection of stories finds us in the midst of US naval projects going wrong, chasing a serial killer loose on a space station, werewolves and vampires in uneasy truce, a life without a memory of what went before, and when to look a gift horse and cart in the mouth.

This edition we have 3 reviews for you to check out. Mysti Parker follows up Deborah Harkness’ Discovery of Witches with the sequel Shadow of Night. Damien Smith is back with his review of Mark Walden’s Earthfall, a science fiction adventure from the author of the H.I.V.E. series. I review Rian Johnson’s Looper, a recent time travel film, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis and Emily Blunt.

We’re always looking for images for our work, so please get in contact if you have an artist to recommend or would like to see your work on the cover.

If you wouldn’t mind, we’d also love you to share SQ Mag with your friends, especially those that write speculative fiction. We’re always looking for short fiction for the magazine, and we love hearing that people enjoy these stories.

So thank you for being here on the journey with us for 2012, and we hope that we’ll see you in the new year.

Happy imaginings.

Sophie Yorkston
Editor, SQ Mag