» Issue Six Hundred Sixty Nine

Notes from The Editor’s Desk (March 2026)

This monthly column is published on the fourth Thursday of every month, and is a space to share information that doesn’t fit anywhere else in our publication. This includes a wide range of opportunities for writers, news and information, and subscribers’ recent success stories. Opportunities: Last Girls’ Club: The Witches’ Cosmo Summer is reading for…

Issue Six Hundred Sixty Nine Notes from the Editor's Desk

Cahava: Now Seeking Submissions

Cahava is a new quarterly journal of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. They welcome submissions from around the world, and they also publish translations. Now through April 15, Cahava is seeking submissions for their first issue, scheduled for publication this spring. Although they are open to submissions year-round, they hold deadlines for specific issues. Authors of…

Pacing as Moral Choice

Pacing gets taught like it’s a knob. Turn left for slow burn, right for thriller. Add a car chase. Cut the backstory. Keep it moving. That kind of advice makes pacing sound mechanical, like oiling a hinge. It isn’t. It’s closer to deciding who deserves a full sentence and who gets brushed off with “and…

Issue Six Hundred Sixty Nine

3 Common Mistakes Committed by Self-Published Novelists (And How to Avoid Them)

By Michael Howard Over the past couple years I have read and reviewed dozens of self-published books, most of them novels. As you can probably imagine, the quality of the writing ranges from totally incompetent to quite good. The majority fit into the middle of that spectrum. Many of the novels I review begin on…

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