Please, Sir - a few thoughts

Just a few thoughts, as I'm reading Please, Sir submissions. Editing anthologies is tricky because you have to find the best stories, but you also have to find stories that will read well together, in a row. I think part of the problem may be with my titles, which are tentative. When authors see Please, Sir and Please, Ma'am, they think their story needs to have a literal "Sir" and "Ma'am." And some of them are fabulous, and I'm looking forward to publishing them.

The only problem is that I can't have 20 stories that all have umpteen "Please, Sir" and "Please, Ma'am"s in them, because that would get boring. It's a tough thing to stress in guidelines, because I do need some of that, but ideally, all the tops, and all the narrators, will be different enough, yet have their kink in common. It's very much an "I know it when I see it" thing, but I guess if I had one piece of advice I'd say don't force it. If the characters work with that terminology, go for it. But if they don't, for my books, anyway, think of the spirit of what I'm going for. The spirit of submission, in this case. I'm really excited about these books; apparently, Yes, Sir has been doing well at Borders, and I hope the same goes for these. I love reading submissions, especially since it gives me something productive to do when I'm stalled on my own writing, which would be now...not a good time to be stalled when a ton of deadlines are next week.

And again, this is not about any specific submission. I've gotten some really amazing ones. And far more galling to me are the people who don't indent; again, it may seem like no big deal, but it is, to this editor anyway.

Usually I turn my books in to Cleis, well, let's just say I think they were bowled over when I filed Best Sex Writing 2010 two weeks early. I'm looking forward to getting that lineup finalized and am working on bestsexwriting.com, well, I have hired Brian Van to make it for me. There are other pieces of writing that are lingering, awaiting my attention, but for now, that's what I'm up to. Escaping to Kansas City, Missouri this weekend to visit the wonderful Emily Farris of Scanner and casserole fame.