The magazine is reducing from 3 issues a year to 2 issues a year, with the aim of reducing to an annual magazine within a few years. The current issue is no.25 and the next one (no.26) will appear autumn 2005. The subscription has increased to £9.00 for 3 issues, £7.00 for 2 issues, £5.00 for single copies.
The web site will continue to provide information on current and forthcoming issues, a sample of work from recent issues, and details about subscriptions etc. A separate section of the web site devoted to writing by children and young writers will continue. I hope that the less frequent appearance of the magazine will allow more regular updates of the web site.
My aim is for 'Fire as a magazine to continue to promote unpublished, unknown, and unfashionable writers, including young writers and those just starting out. I am also wanting to move towards having more space in the magazine for work that I solicit from writers I like, admire, or have recently discovered. This will mean there will be less space (no more than a third of the space in each issue) for unsolicited work from published writers. This in turn means I am very likely to return such work and am generally discouraging such submissions. Currently there is an additional factor of a large backlog of accepted work which will need to be published over the next two years or so, and which means that to all intents and purposes Fire should be considered closed for submissions at present.
One further point to make. I obviously need subscription levels to be maintained if Fire is to continue, but at the same time I don't want to make subscribing a condition for getting work accepted. However, if I do accept work and the writer doesn't subscribe, then I'm not able to enter into any correspondence, answer any queries or send out proofs, and you will have to just wait patiently for the issue with your work in to appear. For subscribers, however, when I send out copies of the issues you've subscribed to, I also guarantee to give you updates as best I can as to the progress of my plans to publish your work.
Jeremy Hilton
March 2005