DEAR READER

Dear Reader,

you must, or may, forgive my diatribes. The reader does not want to know about the author, not really, only the stories, if they’re any good. The author is the mystery behind the scenes, the spirit that is not quite their books, the voice behind the art and artifice. My frustration is not unconnected though. We all know the stories of author’s walls pasted with publisher’s polite and often easy rejection notes, but that has been happening behind the scenes here, again and again, and perhaps it is more disheartening when you have achieved a measure of success and joy in writing. More a bullet in the soul, each exhausting time. It’s just the good old bad world, but work takes a measure of support, and in the end the spirit wears out the breast.