Senegor Writes

My first five stories came back from my editor Mim. We communicate by e mail. The stories go out to her as a Microsoft word document, all in black print and return to me splashed all over with red, her corrections. I quickly perused these and discovered good news and bad news.The good news was that she liked most of them, and thought they were worth publishing. The bad news was that the one I thought would be my flagship story, Testicle Talk, she had issues with. This is a dialogue driven story in which two different pairs of people[...]

Unexpected feedback from one of my readers, Ahmet Senol Ozbek of Istanbul delighted me this past weekend. He sent me kudos, but also some specific, useful advice on scene details. His advice complemented those from two earlier readers.Every writer needs readers. These are volunteers who have the thankless job of reading raw, unpolished drafts, often with grammatical and spelling errors, and then returning honest feedback to the writer at the risk of injuring their mutual relationship. I have mine. They are a curious assortment of Americans and Turks.Readers come in three kinds. One group is what can be called cheerleaders.[...]

New year, 2015. I take stock in my completed short stories. A total of fifteen for 85,000 words. Holy crap! It's already bigger than Dogmeat, my first book, and we don't have an intro, acknowledgements, and other trimmings that fatten the word count. I e-mail Mim.Mim Harrison is my editor. We've never met face-to-face, but I consider her a good friend and a terrific editor. We have a certain special rapport, almost all by e mail, a bit by phone. Carpe diem, she responds. I look it up. Seize the moment. With that, I set my second book, my anthology[...]