Realms of Fantasy looks like it’s gone for good now.
The more I think about it, the more depressed I feel. I’ve actually been a subscriber to RoF since its first issue. It was what motivated me to start really trying to write, in a half-hearted, teenaged kind of way. While I make a lot of jokes about my collection of rejection slips now, the first rejection that I ever got was from RoF, years and years and years ago. It was my goal to some day get a story published in the magazine, because I just knew I had it in me to write stories that could make someone laugh, or sniffle, or cheer, or cringe, or think like the ones in RoF did.
And now it’s a goal that I will never attain. I guess it says something that until this day, I’ve kept alive one of the dreams that I had as a nerdy, awkward fat girl pecking away at the keyboard of a 486. I’ve come far since then, but not far enough. What I took out of high school was mostly a lot of stupid insecurities and confusion. But RoF remained something that my adult self could share with the awkward teenager of my memories, and it was without question wonderful.
I’m going to miss you, RoF. More than I can say.