We’re in the midst of editing/curating/catching Contagion. We thought we’d give you a short report on the patient. We’ll leave it up for you to decide if we mean ourselves or the magazine. Editing the Abridged isn’t the same as editing the Honest Ulsterman. With the HU we try to create an interesting eclectic journal with no over-arching ethos apart from quality of writing and the promotion of local and international talent. The Abridged, likewise focuses on quality and talent but we’re also trying to create a landscape, in the Contagion something creeping, something strange, something wrong. Themes for us aren’t just themes; they’re the brush or pencil or big stick in which we attempt to create a world. As we’ve said before this world used to be a couple of metres apart from reality. Now it’s difficult to tell one from the other. Which makes it harder for us strangely enough. If our world becomes the real world then we obviously have to create another that’s more extreme than this. We’re trying to do this without going down the obvious route of adding more sex and violence, so to speak, to the mag. Though noticeably each issue is becoming more ‘adult’. There’s nothing more ridiculous than making horror films suitable for family viewing by somehow anesthetizing the message and making them comfortable. We still feel the (we consider great) responsibility of editing a magazine. We’re in a position that many people would love to be and we’ve been fortunate enough to do things many people would love to do. It’s something we don’t take for granted. So the Abridged shouldn’t make us feel comfortable. We hope you like what we do of course but we hope it doesn’t make you feel comfortable also. Anyways on with the editing. Image by Audrey Gillespie.