First of all, status on categories, update on submission responses:

• The fall Short Story Award (SSA) for New Writers competition has just been finalized, we have contacted the winners, and the top-25 list is posted at www.glimmertrain.org. (You can also check status of your online submissions by logging into the submission site and clicking on "My Submissions.") These are the winning stories:
  • 1st place: "Saints Alive" by Scott Anderson publishes in issue 65 (Nov 07).
  • 2nd place: "Morth" by Marc Basch
  • 3rd place: "Goodbye My Loveds" by Laura van den Berg

• Winter Fiction Open (FO): Just closed. Results post at www.glimmertrain.org on April 10.

• Winter Very Short Fiction (VSF): Closes on January 31.

• Standard story category: Closes on January 31.

• We will, as always, send emails acknowledging receipt of your submissions. Please be sure we have the email address you really use. (To change your email address, log in at the site, and click on Contact Preferences. We will email you to let you know decisions about your standard story submissions. And, as always, we will email, call, write, or bellow until we reach authors whose stories (standard or competition) are chosen for publication.

• We will no longer send single-purpose emails announcing that competitions are open nor send emails with results of competitions, but this regular bulletin will provide both of those pieces of information.

• Lots of email providers are making increasing efforts to protect their customers from spam, but sometimes they inadvertently block messages you genuinely want. If you would like us to be able to reach you about your stories, send you password reminders and upcoming bulletins, please ask your email provider to add both glimmertrain.org and glimmertrainpress.com to your safe-senders list. If you do not want to get these bulletins, please forward this email to us at eds@glimmertrain.org.

Second, changes in guidelines:

• The maximum word count for the Very Short Fiction Award has been expanded to 3,000.
• In April, we will have our first Family Matters (FM) competition.
• Our reading fees for the competitions—there will never be reading fees for the standard category—have increased by $2 - $5.
  Susan and I started Glimmer Train, a non-commercial literary operation, in 1990 and still put personal funds into the company every year. We're the only ones here—no employees, no interns. We read all the online submissions ourselves. We're sorry to need to charge reading fees at all, but we could not continue without them. Please note that our rate of pay for stories is one of the highest among literary publications: $700 for standard submissions; $1200 for first-place SSA, VSF, and FM; $2,000 for first-place FO; and remember that there are no reading fees for our standard story category, which is open January, April, July, and October. To all of you who let us read your work (in any category!) and who subscribe to Writers Ask and Glimmer Train Stories, a million thanks for helping keep this literary journal alive!

Other "news":

We tried something different this time. Rather than sending competition results notifications, we simply posted the results at the site, www.glimmertrain.org, but—as we've heard too many times—Mistakes were made. I failed to make note of that procedural change in the recent competition announcement and on the submissions page. This really bothered a number of people; I apologize and thank those of you who graciously forgave my failure to advise in advance!

We keep Glimmer Train going because we love reading stories (and interviews) from writers all around the world, it's a thrill to present great work to readers who long to read it, and we have a personal affinity for readers and writers. We think maybe we know a few things about who you are and what matters to you, but there is obviously far more we don't know that we probably should. If you'd like to, we invite you to share a little with us. (By the way, we do not rent or sell our writers' personal data to anyone, ever.) Click here to complete our Bulletin One survey!

We've recently accepted these stories from authors for publication in Glimmer Train Stories:
(Note: If you look at any one issue of  GTS, you'll have the opportunity to think, "They only publish women!" "They only publish men!" "They only publish new writers!" "They only publish big names!" "They only publish Americans!" "They only publish non-Americans! Please don't worry; if you looked at just one issue of  Glimmer Train Stories, you could understandably think any one of those statements was true, but you would be mistaken.)

"A Man's Work" by Danielle LaVaque-Manty
"Jefferson Street" by Eric Trethewey
"Aliens" by Louis Gallo
"Don't Tell the Cuzzins" by Rolaine Hochstein
"Monstrum" by Thomas O'Malley

The spring issue (#62) of Glimmer Train Stories will include these authors: Cary Holladay, Charles H. Antin, Jane Rosenzweig, Sean McCarthy, W. Tsung-yan Kwong, Nic Brown, Karen Shepard, Susan Fox, Doug Crandell, and Ethan Hauser. There will be a fine interview of Michael Cunningham by Sarah Anne Johnson, and Siobhan Dowd's article about silenced voice, Elif Shafak. On February 1st, you'll be able to read excerpts by clicking on issue 62 here: Glimmer Train Stories.

Lastly, the spring issue (#35) of Writers Ask will include these topics: Place and Setting, Character, Influence of Reading, and Publishers & Agents. Here's a look:

When I first work with a character, he/she is flat. The character begins by speaking in ways that feel directed by the author. The dialogue is horrible and no one seems to be speaking convincingly. I have to stay with these people until they come alive on the page, until they begin to speak and act in ways that are more their own. But sometimes a character comes in whole. Anytime I write about a seven-year-old boy, he comes in as a complete person. Seven-year-old boys are easy for me. Maybe I am actually a seven-year-old boy—disguised as a woman.

The more difficult characters have to be lingered with, like staying around people you know until you know something more about them. You might think you know how they would behave, then they surprise you, and your idea dissolves—they become alive outside your ideas of how they are. I create scenes and go with these characters to different places. Maybe we go to the zoo and I can see something they are afraid of, or maybe they have an argument, or someone comes to see them. The more places (scenes) we go, the better I understand their behavior.
—Elizabeth Cox, author of The Slow Moon, Night Talk, The Ragged Way People Fall Out of Love, Familiar Ground, and Bargains in the Real World, interviewed by Sarah Anne Johnson

We so appreciate you guys—thank you for letting us read your work and for reading the work we publish. We really hope you found something useful in our first bulletin!