I open this month’s issue with a question: What kind of risks have you taken this month? With your writing? With your reading? With your general willingness to take a chance? By taking such chances, you run the risk of stumbling upon something new, of learning something new, of succeeding in ways you didn’t know were possible.I also want to extend an invitation. Submit. Submit your work to Connotation Press. Submit your work elsewhere, but please, please Submit. Take a risk. Put yourself out there. You’ll be blown away by what happens next.
The stories in this month’s issue began with writers willing to take a risk. And those risks turned out spectacularly well. Every one of these stories should come with a warning label: NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. In her Interview, Featured Writer Donna Trump provides terrific, practical guidance (courtesy of one of her mentors, the incredible Benjamin Percy) concerning just how to approach a short story. And when she talks about the inspiration for her own story “A Singular Certainty,” I dare you to read her words without tears in your eyes.
Featured Writer Natalie Eaton gives us an incredible ride in “When We Were Girls,” and in her interview Natalie opens up about the tough job of getting down to work, of talking about the truth.
In “The Butterfly Child” Robert P. Kaye dazzles us with his prose, teasing our “sensory integration issues” and showing how we all might be capable of metamorphosing. And in the wickedly funny “Steel Drum” Kaye’s narrator reminds us that “going up is more fun than coming down” and introduces us to Plan B.
Matt Lewis takes us to another dimension, one that threatens to swallow us whole, in “Treeline.”
Every one of the stories in this issue of Connotation Press deserves a second reading, a third, maybe a fourth. Every one of them has something to teach about the glorious rewards of taking a risk on the page.
