The Fifth Anniversary Edition is the Seven Deadly Sins issue.

Welcome to the Fifth Anniversary Edition of "Tales From the Still-Beating Heart." This year comes with new writers and new tales to chill your blood. But first allow me to recount a tale here at the beginning, a true tale which just happened to occur one year ago on Halloween. One of our faithful readers was looking for a book to read his girlfriend on Halloween night. But as he passed by a bookcase in his home he noticed that one publication in particular was sticking out. Not just an inch, but half a book width. His attention was drawn because he knew that he had not pulled any of the books out to read in days and that it had not been sticking out earlier. He looked at the magazine to see that it was Tales from the Still-Beating Heart. He found it so unusual he gave us a call just to tell us about it. A mere coincidence? He forgot he'd pulled it out, you say? Nay. The book did indeed slip itself out on that bookshelf in order to be read - to be read on that Halloween night as it was meant to be. We here at Tales From the Still-Beating Heart are sure of it.

This year is a special edition in that it marks our fifth year of publication. We found this summer that our publication has a niche in the publishing world. Publications that enjoy the size of our readership and which reap similar profits (not) are called zines, a clipping from the word magazine which is pronounced just as is the end of the word magazine. To add some special wickedness to this fifth year's addition we decided to indulge ourselves with the Seven Deadly Sins. Between these covers you will find seven different tales from seven different authors, each consigned his own deadly sin. The spine tingling begins with Envy as a not so saintly priest dives head first into sin. Then comes a stomach churning story of Gluttony as a man named Chuck embodies the sin to its fullest. Next is spun an account of avaricious Greed made to come true by an evil wish. Sin number four is Lust, and lust it is as the heroine Filamina likes what she sees. Then, when the sin of Pride enters the world of the circus, the lion tamers find it a matter of tooth and claw. For sin number six, Sloth is woven together with inescapable horror for lazy Joe Paramoure. For the final sin of the Seven, Wrath becomes incarnate on Earth and begins plans for its final doom.

Accompanying the Seven Deadly Sins in this years publication are our usual tales of horror and misadventure. This Halloween with our younger crowd we cross paths with disappearing corpses, witches serving up eyeball soup, and trick or treating. Our teenage authors bring us thousands of rats and a dismembered protagonist. The collection is then rounded off by two more tales, one with bumbling werewolves and the other featuring omnipotent reptiles in Thailand.

Thirteen authors have woven the web of tales for this 1997 version, our largest showing to date, as well as being the perfect number for the season. We hope you enjoy. Ah, ha ha ha ha ha!