Avery 3 will have 5

So, we decided on five: “Birds of Paradise/Birds of Prey” by Sherrill Alesiek, “The Holy Day” by Malcolm Dixon (a writer-name, if I ever heard one), “Faculty Meeting” by Tom Whalen, “The Dogs of Baltimore” by Rob Roensch, and “Bath or Mud or Reclamation or Way In/Way Out” by Blake Butler. We’ll probably publish them in that order, too.

Story order is an art unto itself, by the way.

I kinda feel it necessary to add that we also wanted to publish two other fantastic stories: “The Virgin of Monte Ramon” by Mia Alvar and “A Story in Which No One Dies” by J. A. Tyler. However, upon receiving our acceptance email, the authors explained that their stories have already been promised elsewhere. In fact, the latter is already published online with Pindeldyboz (you should totally check this story out, by the way; and while you’re at it, keep an eye out (she didn’t say who’s gonna publish it) for Mia’s story – it’s dynamite). Both authors apologized for not having emailed us about this information, and even though they were really nice about it, I can suddenly see why some publications do not accept simultaneous submissions. What exacerbated our situation, too, was that we were considering another story during this time as well. I swear, we must have sent dozens of emails back and forth about it: I wanted the story; Andrew didn’t; Adam was on the fence. Finally, we decided against the story, and we sent an email to this effect, explaining that the story nearly made the cut.

Then, we get an email from the author: the story’s already been promised elsewhere, too!

Ah! So, we had spent hours reading (and re-reading and re-reading) and talking about and thinking about just this one story, and we wouldn’t have been able to publish it anyway!

Again, the author was very apologetic and hey, I’m Catholic, so I forgave him. But seriously! It just wasn’t a very good week, that week, for us Avery folks.

This week’s been better because we now have our stories and it looks like we might even have a cover.

After many. Many emails.

We had already agreed on the photo for the cover (after various exchanges), but we couldn’t agree on what color the word “Avery” needed to be. I loved green; Adam was just okay with it; Andrew didn’t like it at all; Doug didn’t like it, but then he slightly altered the green and said that he actually did like it now. Andrew and Doug thought that it looked too sci-fi (because our name is gonna be laid over a dark sky), despite the fact that Doug seemed to be okay with the color at this point.

So, we tried red and we tried yellow.

And guess what?

I liked green; Adam liked red.

And then, we get an email from Andrew: “Ha--this will seem like a joke, but I honestly think the yellow looks the best. Tiebreaker?”

We’ve decided to just let Doug decide, since he’s the graphic designer and probably knows more about this stuff than we do.

Looks like we’re going with yellow.

Gosh, I have so much I wanna talk about still. I’ll try to move along quickly.

Question: why aren’t we publishing more stories by women authors?

Answer: because most of our submissions are from men, and most of the stories that were moved into the maybe and Maybe folders (like, seriously, 80%) were written by men.

Question: what the heck?

Answer: my thoughts exactly.

You’ll also most likely notice – after you read Avery 3 – that all our five stories are first-person narratives. This really, really, bothered me at first. For obvious reasons (well, I think they’re obvious). It still kinda bugs me now, even, though after talking with Andrew and Adam about it, I know that it’s our job to publish the best, the strongest stories we can, no matter what kind and no matter what author.

But, I couldn’t help but (this was just before we sent out acceptance letters) feverishly re-read all the stories that were still sitting in the maybe and Maybe folders (I honestly did this, sick as I am) in the hopes that perhaps we had overlooked a good third-person narrative, for example, or perhaps a strong story written by a woman. Of course, what made this difficult was that those (overlooked) stories would have to have been better than the five we’d already agreed upon.

And none of them were.

Hours of my life I’ll never get back.

Ah, but even as I say this, I remember: they’re honest stories written by devoted people, and they deserve as many reads as they can get.