😍 I love silly puns

Dear Reader,

I think I may just stick to Mondays for these love letters.

Everyone needs a little love on a Monday. And it gives us a break from Prompt Day to think about all the good things that happened during the week.

Like a dumb young recruit, I put my hand up at work. Now I’ve been thrust into a project leadership role which is far more demanding.

So we may need a new editor, I love doing it, but we may need help keeping the growing submissions moving at a good pace (but at the same level of feedback too!).

I’ll be writing up an Editors Manifesto shortly to help make this process streamlined and consistent. Good writing comes from good feedback.

I love that we’ve reached this point and I hope I don’t jinx it now! We’ll reach out to our shortlisted writers soon to invite them to join the editing team. Or ascend to the Microcosm Pantheon, whichever sounds cooler.

I love the new military job prompt this week (friend link).

What I think works so well with characters based on jobs is the reading up or the leaning on archetypes that must be done. We need to purposefully bring details and concepts into our pieces to make them work.

My own story is almost ready, a sign of a good prompt if you can’t help but write something immediately. That will join our pipeline soon, I love that we have a pipeline of stories, two posts a day for multiple days. That’s new!

I love how Paul Mansfield has staked a claim on the First Post spot but I challenge our other writers to dethrone him!

Especially for one of the last First Post spots — in a future month soonish, once we’ve worked out the details — we plan on changing this up to focus on writers that give the most to our growing community.

It’s more Win-Win and less Zero-Sum (or is that Zero Dark Thirty this week?). We’ll also probably have two spots. If you have any ideas on how we can measure the most giving then highlight this text and respond.

I love that our challenges have caught the eyes and hearts of our writers.
Four (!) writers submitted entries.

Smillew Rahcuef and Paul Mansfield shared Empty Worlds. Here's Smillew’s Pianoland — I have a response brewing already. Paul’s lands tomorrow and my response the next day. Give these worlds a read and see if they inspire stories for you too.

And Nanji Erode added a Mini-Novella about his robots called Pete, I loved the second story most, such an eerie idea it has me eavesdropping just in case.

Josh Knapp came up with his own challenge, somewhat on purpose 😉
We’ll call it a Shared Cereal (because I love silly puns). I’ll write it up with his help soon — if I get his point it looks like relay serial fiction.

I’m loving the creativity that’s coming through!

Our ‘normal’ stories still deserve love of their own, my favourite story for a while has been Ana Echeagaray’s The Guardian. It’s a love letter too of sorts, so I may be biased.

Then there’s Alex Godley foxy tale. I loved the crafty character in Thomas Mullen’s What’s Done In The Dark.

I loved that Josh Knapp cleverly combined two old jobs. And I smiled at Paul Mansfield’s surprise ending. I loved that Karen Traub’s story drew me in and had me wondering if it was fiction in the end.

I loved how many stories we had this week, and how challenging it was to keep up with them all. It’s a good problem to have. Each one is special, these are just the ones that caught my eye this week.

As always, thank you for sharing and thank you for reading.

All my writerly love,

Your Editor,
Zane Dickens