Sometimes You Get a Second Chance

If you haven’t already noticed, Spinetingler Magazine has been progressively evolving a new identity over the last month or so. The changes have all been part of a general facelift, which will conclude this week with an “official” relaunch.

“We made a decision to shift away from issue-based publications and towards a continuous publication format,” explains non-fiction editor Brian Lindenmuth in a news release. “At the same time, we wanted to split the mystery and crime fiction content off of the parent site, BSC Review, to give it room to breathe and bring it into greater relief.” He goes on to say that Spinetingler will expand its reportorial and critical range to cover crime fiction “in all of its forms,” from books and short stories to television, movies, comics, music, and more. In addition, Lindenmuth writes, “Spinetingler will be debuting two brand-new original short stories this week. For the next three months we will be featuring two brand-new original stories a month and then we will switch to one new story a month.”

To celebrate its relaunch, the Webzine will roll out a number of special features this week. Again from Lindenmuth’s news release:

On Monday Spinetingler will post an original story by Hilary Davidson and we will kick off our annual Conversations with the Bookless series, which is a continuation of last year’s BSC Review series. The Conversations series will run on weekdays for the next couple of weeks.

On Tuesday we will have a review of this weeks episode of Justified and an exclusive interview with P.D. James.

On Wednesday we will be debuting a new weekly column that focuses on crime songs and we will be announcing all of the nominees for the 2010 Spinetingler Awards. The voting polls will open also.

On Thursday we have an article on Asian crime fiction and an exclusive article by Adrian McKinty.

On Friday we will publish the second original short story and we will have an exclusive interview with Robert Crais. ...

On Saturday we will be running two articles. The first is titled “The Greater Bruen Mythos” and the second is titled “The Wire: The Feminine Equation.”

On Sunday, in addition to our weekly wrap-up, our weekly coverage of Breaking Bad will continue.

This sounds good, but also pretty damn challenging. Let’s hope that Lindenmuth, Sandra Ruttan, Jack Getze, and the rest of the Spinetingler crew can maintain the ambitious pace they’re setting.