It’s been less than three weeks since I announced that I was reinventing Penstricken as an online literary journal.

Quite honestly, I didn’t know what to expect. Would it be ridiculed? Celebrated? Ignored? My greatest concern was that we wouldn’t receive enough submissions to produce a first issue.

Thanks to you guys, I am no longer worried. We’ve had a lovely little pile of stories and poems popping up in our inbox. With over seven weeks remaining until the deadline, I’m increasingly confident we’ll be able to unleash issue #1 this winter. So please, keep them coming!

We are a little short on non-fiction articles compared to fiction and poetry. If you have written an article about writing fiction, we would especially like to encourage you to consider submitting it.

I also want to extend a super jumbo-sized thank you to everyone who has donated financially. Your donations will help to keep Penstricken afloat. More than that, the confidence and trust you have shown us by donating has been a real encouragement. So, thank you to you all.

We’ve been working like mad to get everything ready in time for winter. The main thing we’ve been working on this week is creating a basic template for how the first issue will look. There’s still more work to be done but it’s shaping up nicely if I do say so myself. Of course, it will look a lot better with your stories and poetry in it.

Our reading period begins after the October deadline so don’t worry if you haven’t heard anything before then. We will be in touch with everyone who has submitted something to let you know if we would like to include your work in the first issue. If you have requested feedback, we will send this along with our response.

Happy writing!