PotD: "A making day? A mending day?"

From The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss, published in 2014:

Laying in the dark, she wondered what the day would bring. Some days were trumpet-proud. They heralded like thunder. Some were courteous, careful as a lettered card upon a silver plate.

But some days were shy. They did not name themselves. They waited for a careful girl to find them.

This was such a day. A day too shy to knock upon her door. Was it a calling day? A sending day? A making day? A mending day?

She could not tell. 

The Prose of the Day series, curated by editors, contributors, and supporters of Decameron journal, showcases examples of particularly excellent prose. To suggest an entry, email the excerpt and your reasons for calling it excellent to decameron@penandanvil.com.

On slow submissions

This stock rejection form from the Essanay Film Management Company of Chicago back in the day has been making the rounds in the literary blogosphere for a few years, popping up on blogs like Literary Rejections on Display. We laughed out loud when we first saw it; it's a gas! Then we 'shopped it up nice and sharp and framed it for our press office wall.

Authors have a lot of time on their hands around the holidays, when the business of their workaday jobs slows down, and many shops turn out their employees for seasonal time off. This means that the pace of correspondence in a literary press picks up, since authors have the time to follow-up on submissions, and check in on projects that have been hanging fire, and buzz the tower about forgotten commitments.

PotD: "He lurks by turns in the garret..."

From The Cares of a Family Man by Franz Kafka, written between 1914 and 1917, and appearing first in the collection A Country Doctor in 1919:

At first glance it looks like a flat star-shaped spool for thread, and indeed it does seem to have thread wound upon it; to be sure, they are only old, broken-off bits of thread, knotted and tangled together, of the most varied sorts and colors. But it is not only a spool, for a small wooden crossbar sticks out of the middle of the star, and another small rod is joined to that at a right angle. By means of this latter rod on one side and one of the points of the star on the other, the whole thing can stand upright as if on two legs. 

One is tempted to believe that the creature once had some sort of intelligible shape and is now only a broken-down remnant. Yet this does not seem to be the case; at least there is no sign of it; nowhere is there an unfinished or unbroken surface to suggest anything of the kind; the whole thing looks senseless enough, but in its own way perfectly finished. In any case, closer scrutiny is impossible, since Odradek is extraordinary nimble and can never be laid hold of. 

He lurks by turns in the garret, the stairway, the lobbies, the entrance hall. Often for months on end he is not to be seen; then he has presumably moved into other houses; but he always comes faithfully back to our house again. Many a time when you go out of the door and he happens just to be leaning directly beneath you against the banisters you feel inclines to speak to him. Of course, you put no difficult questions to him, you treat him--he is so diminutive that you cannot help it--rather like a child. "well, what's your name?" you ask him. "Odradek," he says. "And where do you live?" "No fixed abode," he says and laughs; but it is only the kind of laughter that has no lungs behind it. It sounds rather like the rustling of fallen leaves. And that is usually the end of the conversation. Even these answers are not always forthcoming; often he stays mute for a long time, as wooden as his appearance. 

I ask myself, to no purpose, what is likely to happen to him? Can he possibly die? Anything that dies has had some kind of aim in life, some kind of activity, which has worn out; but that does not apply to Odradek. Am I to suppose, then, that he will always be rolling down the stairs, with ends of thread trailing after him, right before the feet of my children, and my children's children? He does no harm to anyone that one can see; but the idea that he is likely to survive me I find almost painful.

The Prose of the Day series, curated by editors, contributors, and supporters of Decameron journal, showcases examples of particularly excellent prose. To suggest an entry, email the excerpt and your reasons for calling it excellent to decameron@penandanvil.com.

More recommendations for quite short fiction

Following-up on our previous post listing magazines and sites devoted to publishing flash-, micro-, or quite-short-fiction, here is another batch of outlets you might want to check out:

• Wigleaf is an award-winning magazine which features stories under 1000 words.
• The Molotov Cocktail is "a projectile for incendiary flash fiction," run by "purveyors of the dark and offbeat" and curated by Josh Goller.
• 1000words project was begun in 2012 to celebrate the first-ever National Flash-Fiction Day.
• This past fall, Redivider launched an annual fiction contest for flash stories that are short, smart, and significant. Follow the mag on Twitter, or check their website or Submittable portal, for news about the next announcement for submissions.

From our own side of things, we're glad to report that the long-awaited first edition of Decameron is with our printer. We'll be mailing copies to contributors, reviewers, and that very special group of people, our subscribers, this month! An excellent way to kick off the new year.