Maybe I’m made braver by having tackled the technology of the blog (see on this site HERE). Regardless, I’m now obsessed with making my Website as helpful and engaging for visiting readers and writers as it can be.
 
Of course, I want something out of it too. First, to acquaint readers with my writing; second, to establish a smoother system for getting my short stories out to journal and magazine editors without all the busy-ness and confusion of sending out and waiting three months, usually, for neat little form rejections, then sending again and waiting again, on and on. I want a better system for tracking what went where and when.
 
You short story writers know the game. You know how you take a day off from writing, say, once a month, to send stories out. You are careful to list each story, the date and where it’s going, but when it comes back you can’t locate the list anywhere; it was on your desk a quarter of a year ago but a whole bunch of paper has passed through since your story send-out day. There has to be a better way.
 
Ready?
 
Now, this is bold, and risky—because of my audaciousness I may never have another story published anywhere.
 
I want editors to come to me, instead of the other way around for a change. So, half in jest, I’m setting up a story store on this site. My best and closest-to-getting-published short stories will appear in The Story Store. Readers can read and comment, if they like, and editors can flock to the site to make “nice” deals with me. I want money, not copies, and I want to control something in this business of writing. I want to be sought after. I want to know why one story and not another, which seems to work quite well for me, gets rejected (see essay on Lois Rosenthal). I want to understand why one story gets sent on for inclusion in the best annual anthologies and another doesn’t. I read as much short fiction as anyone out there. Don’t I know what’s good from what’s not? I work and rework my stories—and novels; I weigh every word. And I wouldn’t be putting in the time it takes if I knew the story was no darn good.
 
So, on with The Story Store, a kind of clearance sale of the soul’s stock.
 
I said when I posted my first FREE NOVEL (you have to do this sort of stuff or Google won’t pick you up) on this site that my main objectives were to entertain, delight and control at least one of my novel’s destiny. I’ve received a fair number of responses to the novel (the remaining book of the Staten Bay Trilogy is now posted here). But I suspect that most readers of serious fiction are rather like me: For the full reading experience, books must be held in one’s hands like a lover’s face.

Welcome to my site. I hope you enjoy it.

Not-Southern Author, Janice Daugharty