Diary of a Mad Editor

There was a time, back when I first started Asterius Press, that I was a stickler for deadlines. I mean, I busted my ass to publish things on time. I’d pull all-nighters — whatever I had to do to accomplish the task at hand. The past few years, however, my health and financial difficulties have thrown a wrench in the works and for my own piece of mind, I’ve pulled back a bit and have been taking things slow. In truth, I’ve become fairly lackadaisical about deadlines. My priorities have simply changed.

Devil Blossoms, the little literary magazine that was once my flagship publication and the thing I was most known for, hasn’t been published since 2007. For the past few years, it’s been on indefinite hiatus. Nonetheless, I had tentatively planned to publish a new issue sometime later in 2010 provided I had enough suitable material and financial resources to make it happen. As such, I started reading submissions for this publication late last August in the hopes of making it happen sooner or later.  One story I’d accepted was from this young writer who, although initially seemed cool with the fact that he’d have to wait a spell before seeing his story in print, quickly fired off a query within a few weeks of acceptance demanding to know when the issue would be published. I replied to him expressing even more clearly that the issue would not soon be published because I simply had other priorities and didn’t have enough material to fill an issue anyway — nor did I know for certain what format the new issue would take. In short, there was a lot of details to work through before I could even think about publishing the issue.  Although it was clear he was not really happy with the situation, he accepted my answer and didn’t withdraw his story. Flash forward a couple of months and I receive yet another query from this guy asking the same question, “When will DB be published?”  Not much has changed since I last communicated with this fellow. I still don’t have quite enough material to fill an entire issue. I still don’t know how or when I’m going to be able to publish it. I have secured the artwork for the cover. The issue is coming together at its own pace and I’m still hoping that when it is ready to be published I will be able to publish it. But I am in no hurry.  I simply don’t feel the same urgency that the author of the story feels.

On one hand, I sympathize with the guy because I’ve been there in that place where you’ve had something you’ve written accepted by a literary publication and you don’t know if or when it will be published for real. It can be agony to wait when you are young and just starting out. It can be like bleeding out slowly onto the floor tiles. I get that. On the other hand, being as I was upfront about the situation from the very beginning, I’m annoyed with him.  After all, when I initially accepted his piece, I told him that he’d have to wait a long, long time and left it up to him whether he wanted to allow me to hold onto his story or take it elsewhere given the situation. He opted to let me hold onto it. He chose to wait it out.  If he queries me a month from now, my reply would be the same, most likely. I can’t give him a firm time table for the issue’s publication and his impatience doesn’t help the situation. As such, I’ve decided to do what I should have done to begin with: release the story back to him.  I mean, I really hate to go all William Packard on his ass, but it does seem to be the best solution for both of us.  This way, he can maybe find a new home for his story and maybe see it published in the near future if he’s lucky. Or maybe not. But that’s the chance you take when you submit work to a publisher.

It’s an unseasonably warm day in December. Imagine you’re a teenage boy of about sixteen or seventeen. You’re sitting in one of those chain book stores — either Borders or Barnes and Noble. You’re sitting with your laptop, eagerly tapping away on the keyboard when your attention is drawn by an attractive female about your age or perhaps a bit older.

You are first drawn to her perfume which smells like bubble gum. Her dark hair (she could be a blonde or a redhead, up to you depending on where you want to take this little exercise) is pulled back into a ponytail. She’s wearing a tunic dress and a pair of Ed Hardy Shoalin boots.

She’s standing in the aisle thumbing through a Jane Austen novel, humming a Christmas Song.

You are immediately attracted to her and want to meet her. Write a vignette or story in which you meet this girl. Maybe you walk right up to her and start a conversation. Or, perhaps you follow her around a bit before you work up the nerve. Either way, during the course of this exercise, you must learn at least three personal details about this young woman and reveal at least three personal things about the teen boy. In addition, you must work the following topics into the story in no particular order: Santa Claus, bananas, sock puppets, David Bowie, quantum physics, Dexter (the tv show) and Mom’s underwear.

Good luck, and get writing.

I was feeling a little ambitious lately — a bit of a departure for me as I’m one of the most unambitious people I know. Anyway, a couple months back, I’d decided that before the end of the year, I would not only write a novel, I would publish two new issues of my ezines, The 13th Warrior Review and Gnome. Well, I did manage the first during NanoWriMo and I was on my way to accomplishing the latter two items on my list, but then problems arose to thwart my efforts yet again.

The first thing that happened was my mistake — a big mistake, actually. See, I had these two poems I was going to publish in Gnome and I thought I’d actually accepted them months ago as I had them in my folder to the upcoming issue and, as per my normal routine, only accepted submissions end-up in the folder for upcoming issues. What I realized was that I’d accidentally sent this poet a rejection instead of an acceptance. Now, I’ve made some mistakes in the past. In fact, by my calculations in the last twelve years, I’ve averaged at leasts half a dozen mistakes a year. But I’ve never done anything this stupid before. Of course, I feel like a huge honking tool and of course, after all this time the poems in question are no longer available. My bad, I guess . . . really and truly.

And then we come to the submission withdrawals which have been coming en masse of late. Remember my little hissy fit a while back about simultaneous submissions and how I hate it when writers don’t inform me about that then pull the rug out from under me later? Well, in the last two weeks, no less than five writers have pulled this crap — the latest just yesterday. I’m especially disappointed about yesterday’s loss because that was a fucking awesome story. More importantly, though, I now have two issues with major holes in them, so the likelihood that I will be able to publish both of these ezines before the end of the year is less likely than it was two weeks ago. It’s very frustrating. Especially considering that with maybe one exception none of these writers waited more than a couple of weeks for a response from me. You would think with all I’ve said and written about simultaneous submissions, these people would know better. Anyway . . .  <sigh>