My apologies if I’m…

My apologies if I'm neglecting mail from any of you. I'm trying to get through the first read of all the subs that have come in for BW (about 250 so far, with some more expected to trickle in). The tentative goal is to sort out the No's from the Maybe's by Wednesday, and send out rejections for that first cut by the end of the week. That may be hopelessly optimistic, though. We'll see.

So far, about one in three is making it into the Maybe pile -- I'm being pretty generous with the Maybe's for this first pass. Some of the immediate disqualifiers are things like:

• no story: this is the most common problem -- people send me erotic scenes, with no conflict. You might be able to convince me that you've got a worthwhile story with no conflict, especially if you have a fabulous command of the language, but you're going to have to work pretty hard at it.

• wrong genre: several sf or fantasy or horror stories have come in that may or may not have some sex in them, but which don't even attempt to be erotic -- no good for us.

• nothing grabbed me: some of the stories are fine -- they have some plot tension, they're sexy...but nothing about them grabbed me, personally. Nothing struck me as really interesting, or innovative, or moving, or funny... This is the category that no writer can predict, honestly -- you can write a fine story, one that lots of other editors would like, but not get the editor you're aiming for. It happens.

Anyway, enough analyzing for now -- I should get back to it. We did take a break to go up and tell them they messed up the chairs (they agreed to fix it with no complaints, thank the gods -- we're not particularly good at confrontation). We also stopped and bought dish soap and flowers, cheerful yellow carnations. There's still junk all over the darn place, but little by little, it starts to feel more like a home.