With two weeks left in the year, it's time for Night Train to think about what we hope to accomplish in the upcoming year, as well as what we've done. 2007 saw us reinvent ourselves as an online journal, with a complete site re-design, including a blog. We launched our Firebox Fiction program, where we published a new story under 1500 words every week, as well as publishing two completely new issues of fiction and poetry, the latter of which was a new (and exciting) venture for us.

• Editor and co-founder Rusty Barnes served on the faculty for the Writers @ Work conference in Salt Lake City, UT and represented Night Train at AWP 2007 in Atlanta, Georgia, pressing the flesh and spreading the word, where he also served on Rose Metal Press's Brevity & Echo reading and panel discussion on flash fiction.
• With Don Lee of Ploughshares, he also addressed the graduate and undergraduate writing communities at Emerson College about submissions and the small press in general.
• Night Train also represented at the annual Boston Small Press Night in conjunction with Brookline Booksmith, held at Great Scott in Allston MA.
• Night Train and interviews with editor Rusty Barnes were used as test cases and sample markets for students in seminars at Columbia College, Chicago and Emerson College, Boston.
• And on the side of the work we publish, "My Darling Sweetheart Baby," by Jon Papernick and "Adding Up and Taking Away," by Richard Madelin were named Notable Stories for 2006 in the Million Writers Award.
  
  

We count 2007 as one of the red-letter years in our existence, wherein we changed the structure of our journal and began to take advantage of the new opportunities and possibilities provided by the internets, while keeping as our focus the publishing of great literature and the support of writers in all stages of their careers.

 
These are our plans for the future:

• Re-introduce cash awards for our Richard Yates competition
• Expand our online capabilities to include community forums, MP3 readings, and more frequent interviews and special features
• Using print-on-demand technology, publish full-length books and anthologies using our contributor list as a primary source.

 
We think all of these goals are reachable, and we're going forward under the assumption that many of you will continue to follow us into these new areas, and support us in the process. As you know, Night Train is a 501(c) 3 organization, but we don't make many sales pitches. Our costs are now relatively low, and money is short, for everyone. We realize that.  So we don’t like to bother. On the other hand, we'd like to continue to bring you the literature you enjoy, and to expand our scope beyond the internet and into the bookstores of the world. We'd like to help writers with their dreams of publishing good work in attractive volumes worth their time, and a reader's time. We'd like your monetary help with that.

 
By visiting and using our donor page, http://www.nighttrainmagazine.com/support.php, you can help us reach our goals, and in so doing, know that the money you send our way will go toward literature, the best we can find and publish and bring before the world and say "see, this is what good writing is and ought to be." Your donations are tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law.

It doesn't take much money. If you prefer to send us $10 or $20 via check to the address listed, or via Paypal to [email protected], we will be extremely grateful. The numbers on our donation page are only suggested guidelines; we gladly accept donations in any amount. It's the end of the year, and you might have an extra few bucks you can spare. We'd like to put it to good use for you. Consider it, if you can. And thanks for visiting our site and reading.