Friday marked the one-year anniversary of former New York Blade editor Tray Butler's reign as editor of HX Magazine. To mark the occasion, Butler celebrated in the only way he could: he quit.

After HX Magazine and Window Media partnered last year, thus bringing The Blade and HX under one happy homo-journo roof, Butler (pictured looking adorable with Lady Bunny) switched positions with Trenton Straube. Though Butler will continue freelancing for HX, he's decided to devote more energy to finishing his novel.

We emailed Mr. Butler for a statement, but he's yet to get back to us. We did, however, come across this statement from his blog:

While traveling over the Thanksgiving holiday, I had a sort of epiphany reiterating what I've known for a couple of months, that it's time for me to move on...

Why leave now? That's a harder one to answer, but part of it has to do with the inherent cycle of working for a weekly publication. Once you've been around the merry go round once, you start to know what's coming next. If not, you haven't been paying attention...

I'm going back to full-time freelancing: not only writing, but getting my illustrations out there more. I plan to finally finish a book I've had in the works for almost a year now.
At first glance, 2007 looks to be nothing like the last two years of my life, which is a vaguely terrifying — but also exhilarating — feeling.

While a new editor's yet to be named, there's definitely one major contender: features editor Brandon Voss. God help us all.