AMERICANA is my new book!
GALAPAGOS BIRDS back cover blurb from Robert A. Iger. What a gift!
Nice encouragement from (confidential) literary magazine
We really enjoyed reading your work — thank you for trusting us with RINGO during our Fiction Magic Spring 2020 call for submissions. It’s never fun to hear that a publication won’t be publishing your work — we’ve been there — but ultimately we can only find space to publish about 2% of submitted fiction. Those are terrible odds but your work definitely has the skill and craft to be in that 2% — this is absolutely not an indictment of your talent and skill as an author, merely the subjective thoughts of a small group of editors who have their own quirks, likes, biases and tastes. So please don’t think of this like a rejection — because rejection hurts — simply think of this as One Step Closer to a Yes. And remember this: Witness has turned away work that has gone on to win MAJOR AWARDS by authors who are SUPER IMPORTANT, including work that went on to be adapted into movies and major TV shows. We’re probably going to kick ourselves for letting your story go, to be honest. We might already be kicking ourselves.
So let’s make a deal: Let’s both continue to do our best work and keep connected. We definitely don’t want to lose you as a Witness future contributor, so if you promise to keep sending great fiction, we’ll keep reading it and trying to find a place for it in a future issue, okay?
Thank you again for trusting us with your fiction. We are so grateful for this opportunity.
Front cover of GALAPAGOS BIRDS.
Robert Iger signs his new book THE RIDE OF A LIFETIME for me!
Robert Iger, Chairman and CEO of the Walt Disney Company, signed his new book THE RIDE OF A LIFETIME for me this morning. In his book, Bob writes about working on a Frank Sinatra concert at Madison Square Garden in the early part of this career; about becoming friends with Steve Jobs and purchasing Pixar; and about learning and leading in the business world and in life. “A little respect goes a long way,” Bob writes, “and the absence of it is often very costly….If you approach and engage people with respect and empathy, the seemingly impossible can become real.”
Finalist!
In 2019, Mathew was a finalist in the novel category of The William Faulkner – William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition 2019 from The Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society with his novel Bernie and the Hermit. See the list here!
