Hello to you Dear Bunburyists from all of us at Bunbury Magazine.

Is is too late now to kick this off with a Happy New Year? Hmmm, it is? Well tough! You’re getting one anyway. Happy New Year, dear Bunburyists, and welcome to the first Bunbury of 2016. Thank you for joining us once again as we explore some of the best writing and art from around the world, as well as speaking to some very exciting people. The theme for this issue is Self. Perfectly fitting. New year, new you and a brand new Bunbury. What could be better?

Well, what is better is getting your hands on it today. Click the beautiful picture below to download it. It is Pay-What-You-Like but we think £3 is a fair price for something so lovingly crafted!

Whenever we choose a theme for an issue, we try to pick something that can be interpreted in almost countless ways. We like to see a wide variety of beautiful, shocking, touching, scary (and many more emotions besides) creativity. Then we like to throw it all together – or more accurately, carefully and lovingly decide which to publish – in the magazine to create something that has something for everyone. What better theme than Self to achieve this?

The world is full of such diverse characters and, as we all know, creativity is driven by character. What we are goes in to what we create. There is something of us in the characters we create, the paintings we paint, the photos we take. For example, Stephen King spent an entire summer dressed as a red-and-white 1958 Plymouth Fury.

This Bunbury is packed full of everything you have come to expect from us. Top-notch poetry, short stories, flash fiction et al. We have also been spoiled with the art and photography we have received for this issue. As usual, on top of all that, we have very exciting interviews with Angie Belcher, whom we met in Edinburgh, about what she’s been up to and about to be up to. Also, Joz Norris about his web series and other things. And, because we love you, a third interview with Nico Reznick, a fantastic indie author you really need to check out.

We feel like we’re reaching milestone after milestone here, with the 3rd anniversary of Bunbury rapidly approaching. We like celebrating prime numbers so this year is a special one for us. To celebrate, we are launching our first physical product! We are deeply excited about this. It is a collection of the best bits of the first 12 issues. You can see where the anthology has been developed from by getting all our back issues, again on Pay-What-You-Like. Go on, treat yourself to some brilliant writing, art and interviews!

As always, we know full well that without all your support, we would not be able to do this so thank you. Thank you to everyone who reads it and submits. Could we ask one more favour? Give us a share on your social media gubbins? The more people see this, the better we can make it for you all and our support network can grow. We want to make this platform for new writers and projects as expansive as possible. Click below to get to our Facebook and Twitter stuff.

One more thing and I promise we are done. We are still taking submissions for issue 13 of Bunbury. The theme is space and it is a little bit of a Bowie Tribute too! Click the picture below for details on how to submit.

Enough rambling! Once again, Happy New Year, Happy Valentine’s Day, Easter, Summer Soltice and…why not, might as well say Merry Christmas 2016 while we’re at it!

Keep scribbling,

Christopher and Keri.

P.S. – that thing about Stephen King isn’t true! We have nothing worth suing for!