Welcome to the first ever edition of The Observatory!

Born on the forums of The Orion Awards, the idea has developed tremendously over the last month or so, and at long last we are ready to show you the pilot! The Observatory is intended to complement the Orion Awards' goal of showcasing quality writing by helping provide people with the means to improve their writing.

Over the coming months, we are aiming to provide you with the very best in news, features, interviews, editorials, writing tips, drawing tips, competitions and more all for the price of a few clicks of the mouse!

This month we have too much for me to mention here, but highlights include all the build up to The Lost Colony (no spoilers, I promise!), reports on Colfer's visit to AFC, three high-class editorials, fan-art, Ask Fowl, Rising Stars, and Guess the Author. Not to mention an exclusive one-on-one interview with fandom-favourite Agi Vega, author of the immensely popular Artemis Fowl: The Aztec Incident and Artemis Fowl: the Sword of God.

We have three so-called "teaser-pages" (quite who came up with that I'm not sure), which have the start of each article on them. If you don't have time to read everything, from there we hope you can choose the articles that interest you most. We also have an index of links on the first page to help you navigate.

From now on, we hope that The Observatory will be released on the first of every month.

Send any comments, suggestions, or compliments about my wings to orionobservatory@gmail.com. Also, we are very much open to reader submissions, so if you have an essay that you would like to see in The Observatory, send it in to the same address.

Enjoy!

The Humble Mosquito
Executive Editor of The Observatory