Clarkesworld’s twentieth anniversary isn’t until October, but for me, July is something to celebrate. This is the month that Sean Wallace and I had a fateful conversation at Readercon that set us on this path. To be more precise, it was at their “Meet the Pros(e)” event, late Friday night on July 7, 2006, probably around 11p.m., maybe later. At the time, Sean was a publisher (Prime Books) and I was a bookseller/academic technologist.

I’ve told the story of that conversation before, several times, in interviews and past editorials. The short version is that we knew each other through my bookstore. I was stocking Prime titles and had been running sample stories from various magazines, including his—Fantasy Magazine—on the store’s website. I believe the conversation started with how the sample stories were impacting subscriptions/sales and made its way around to the recent demise of Sci Fiction and the overall chaotic state of online magazines. We must both like troubleshooting, because we set about trying to figure out why things were the way they were then and as the hour grew late, we came up with a possible solution. By the end of the weekend, we were committed to making it happen. The magazine took the name of the bookstore, and when the bookstore closed a year later, I was having too much fun to just let it go. I started Wyrm Publishing to handle some publishing projects I was interested in taking on and made it part of that instead.

According to the experts of the time, we were supposed to fail in that first year. The bookstore was gone, but for family reasons, not financial. The magazine actually managed to come out a little ahead with the publication of the first annual anthology of Clarkesworld stories. A fluke, according to some, but we did it again and made it to two, then five, then ten, and soon twenty. No one has ever admitted they were wrong, but I completely understand why they would have assumed that. The odds were highly against our survival. Simply being told we’d fail might have been what provided the motivation necessary to make it last. There have been many times a more rational person would have just quit. Instead, I get to say “we’re still here.”

There’s a certain irony to that because July 12th is another important date for me involving another event at Readercon in 2012. It’s the day I nearly died. While setting up Clarkesworld’s table in the dealer’s room, I had a heart attack, more specifically, a widowmaker. I thought it was food poisoning. A few hours later, it was clear to me that it definitely was not, but I had no idea what it was until an EMT walked into our hotel room, took one look at me, and diagnosed it correctly. Fortunately for me, Lahey Clinic was only one block away and really good at their job. The doctors and nurses there are why I’m still here. My family is why I’m still here. My friends are why I’m still here.

I’m very lucky. Not many face the odds I did that night and live to see the next day. Only twenty percent. Hell, not many magazines started online in 2006 and have continued monthly to today. It’s an even smaller percentage. And that is due to my family, my Clarkesworld family, my friends, and our readers.

So, this month, I celebrate that they exist and that Clarkesworld and I are still here. Thank you.