400 words, ~2 minutes reading time
Issue 10 (Spring 2026)
I’ve been a fiction lover for as long as I can remember, reading novels as a kid until well past my bedtime. To this day, I love immersing myself in fantastical worlds, losing myself on wild adventures, and living a multitude of lives far more colourful than my own. Then the cherry on top of the journey’s end: the bittersweet combination of reluctant satisfaction and an unfulfilled longing for more. Considering the intended audience of our magazine, I’m sure many of you can relate.
These days, I find myself lacking the energy to start new books and series no matter how much I want to. There’s no space in my brain to learn the rules of fictional societies and to meet new characters. At first, I thought there was something wrong with me, and I was so afraid that I’d somehow outgrown my lifelong hobby. But I realized that it’s not me; with the current events and the state of the world, reality feels like it’s too-quickly transforming into a dystopian horror. The plot is ridiculous, it would never get published, and the worst part is that I can’t DNF this one. More than ever, I need an escape from this timeline, and I can’t seem to lose myself the way that I could before.
On a brighter note, I’m grateful that I continue to find joy as an editor for Heartlines Spec. Ten issues and three years later, we’ve grown and changed since we put out that first call for submissions featuring SFF long-term relationships. For me, these stories and poems continue to be a welcome escape from the stranger-than-fiction insanity of real life. Our bite-sized pieces feel easier to digest than the 500-page books collecting dust on my to-be-read shelf; my tired brain can still get its fix.
This issue is a milestone, and many of these stories and poems take place in the grey area between worlds. Walk with us down the blurry line dividing one reality and the next–we’ll befriend ocean creatures, robots, and sasquatches, joining them in flux and metamorphoses as they figure out where they’ll end up.
If you’ve been with us from the beginning, thank you so much for your continued support, and if you’re joining now, welcome! I hope you love it here as much as we do. While I continue to manifest a positive turn of events for our world, I hope these pages will serve as a place of safety and solace for you too.
