Early on in Dzanc Books submission policies, for short story collections we asked for people to submit two stories. When we first launched in September 2006, we were absolutely flooded with submissions and after announcing our first two books would be story collections, we got a reputation as a place to submit story collections. I could not have had a better partner in the world than Steven Gillis--generous to a fault, incredibly well read, and an incredible eye for great writing. One minor achilles' heel? Names. Not to the point that it ever caused great problems, but that heel just the same (and truly, if that's the 1%, can you imagine how amazing the other 99% is?).
One day he let me know that he had loved one of our submissions, but hadn't flagged it. And he had read many others since. He couldn't remember the author's name, nor the name of the stories, but did remember there was a "little man" involved. I can't tell you how many emails I got over the course of a couple of weeks with "little man" in them, nor how many searches I did of my email files for "little man," "little," etc. It turns out he wasn't exactly a "little" man, but instead a "tiny" man and his name was Ron. As in, "Tiny Ron," and it took much longer than you'd think to track it back down. To be honest I don't remember at all how I even stumbled onto "Tiny Ron," but once I did and started to read it, I was positive it was the story that Steve had been telling me to find. We asked the author, Suzanne Burns, to send us the rest of the manuscript. Once Suzanne sent us the collection, Steve, Keith Taylor and I all read it immediately and a mere four days later Steve wrote to Suzanne to let her know that Dzanc wanted to publish Misfits and Other Heroes.
This cover remains my favorite Dzanc cover to this day. It was done by Steven Seighman. Something about it--the combination I guess of colors, the image, and the lettering. It's a fantastic collection, by a great author, and I'm excited to know that Dzanc is publishing Suzanne's next collection, The Veneration of Monsters, in July.
Comments