Welcome, or welcome back, to 113 Crickets. This is our second volume of work and we continue our quest to offer new, cutting edge work to delight and inspire the reader. The summer issue contains work by seven writers, new and established, working in a variety of literary styles. Three of the writers are drawn from Dymaxicon's own pool of talent-Nancy Rommelmann, Walt Foreman and Ricki Grady. Nancy Rommelmann, a journalist, and Walt Foreman, a screenwriter, both have short fiction collections due to be published by Dymaxicon later this year-Transportation and Beer in the Sun respectively. This issue features two stories from each collection to whet your appetite for their upcoming books. We have included the introduction to Ricki Grady's Bebop Garden, a lighthearted and witty description of her improvisational approach to gardening, which was published by Dymaxicon in 2011. Ricki's improvisational approach to gardening in some ways mirrors emergent processes in software development, and our readers in the IT field may find inspiration in the gardening metaphor. From the software world itself, we are pleased to present seven poems by Liz Keogh, a published poet and a well-respected Agile coach and facilitator. Liz Keogh's poems are preceded by an interview-style dialog with 113 Crickets where she talks about the connections between poetry and computer code creation. Two other writers in this issue are Mark Eagleton, a previously unpublished writer from Queensland, Australia, whose collection of vignettes painfully reveal the residue of sadness people may live with following a tragedy, and Cindy Lee Berryhill, a Rolling Stone-commended singer/songwriter and recording artist based in Southern California, whose poetry has a lyrical quality congruent with her musical compositions. Closing off the volume is a collection of ten poems by James Franco, inspired by the music of The Smiths. Actor/writer/director James Franco was born and raised in Palo Alto, in the heart of Silicon Valley and the poems are inspired by his experiences as a teenager living in this area. We hope you enjoy this volume. We look forward to reading your reviews, or hearing from you directly if you are interested in contributing work or supporting us through ad placement. You'll find us at 113crickets.com, and you can follow us on Facebook and Twitter to receive up-to-date news of our progress towards the Autumn 2012 issue. Tobias Mayer, editor