Gorezone is now nine years old. I'm not talking about the magazine or the real-life gore site, but ARCVILE's Daily News site. In addition to news, Gorezone features reviews and a spirited community. I knew it well once upon a time, as I moderated the Book Forum there. I met some of you in those days.

I miss it sometimes and I still hate that I left in a fuss of anger and controversy, but I still and always will maintain that I, and my board, did absolutely nothing wrong. Others disagreed with that and instead of fighting, I just left. It was then that I co-founded the Shocklines Message Board with Matt Schwartz and man did THAT turn into a wild place. Many wonderful people are at Shocklines, but it's so big that it became impossible to keep my sanity there.

The Gorezone Book Forum was, in my not-so-humble opinion, the best Goddamn horror lit MB of all time. Everyone was great and it got insanely popular. Not like Shocklines did, thank God, but a lot of people came and coexisted in harmony there.

Heck, we even did our own anthology...edited by none other than the talented Kealan Patrick Burke, with an awesome cover by Deena Warner and an Introduction by Yours Very Truly. Some guy named Keene wrote a Forward. And a bunch of really nice people with serious writing chops contributed short stories. Copies of it are almost gone and Shocklines has long sold out. But Clarkesworld has a few left, I believe.

But I don't want to go on about me and my old forum too much. I want to take this time to salute ARCVILE, who is a passionate, dedicated, very funny guy that has held down the Gorezone ship for almost a decade.

This is an anniversary for me too. I went online right at almost the exact time that Gorezone was launched. I found the site and chose it as my own home on the web. Big things happened for me because of ARC and Gorezone and I'll always be grateful and respectful. To him at least. There are a few others that were there that I'll always feel hostile toward.

But enough of that. Congratulations to ARCVILE for Nine Big Ones, with best wishes for many more to come. I still visit the news page at Gorezone every day, and you should too.