Aphelion

Dan Hollifield set up an Aphelion Facebook page which fulfills some of the functions you mention...

I have both Facebook and Twitter accounts and I do post announcements when new issues go live, but I only have a few friends / followers (sniffle), so it probably doesn't accomplish much.

Luke, welcome to Aphelion -- such as it is.

My solution to keeping up with things here is to just check the site now and again. (I have it bookmarked.)

New issues come out, oh, sometime each month, depending on when the staff is able to spare the time from their day jobs and families. As far as I know, we've never had a "featured story," although we do have some signature collections, such as the excellent Mare Inebrium and Nightwatch series. "Forgotten favorites" get lost in the archives. Our one regular competition is the Flash challenge, and that gets announced on the Fun & Games forum. (There's one up now, if you're game, and we're always hungry for new participants, hint, hint.)

And, if you think IRC is out of date, just wait a few years until the entire planet runs short of bandwidth and we all have to revert to sending smoke signals.

Anyway, poke around some, read the stories and post comments. Click the "Submissions" button if you've got a story or poem of your own sitting around.

Enjoy!