variol son wrote:
As a team, we agonized over all our decisions. Very few of them were easy, and I personally was gutted every time an author's work was not included.
Yeah, it sucks. But we were asked to select and we had to select. I'm truly sorry if we have offended or upset anyone, but that was always going to happen when works are submitted for selection and not universally included.
VS sums it up well for all of us on the selection committee. We were here to do a job and we took it seriously. We weren't heartless bastards gleefully rejecting material left and right, but I can understand how the committee might be painted as such, due to the thankless nature of the task we were assigned. I don't know how many times we can say we're sorry, but for what it's worth, I'll say it too: I'm sorry if our choices resulted in any hurt feelings. VS, dlbpharmd and I carefully judged every entry sent our way; if our judgement seems suspect to some, well, there's not much we can do about that. You folks could maybe launch an independent inquiry or something...
With that out of the way, I want to say it's been a stimulating experience for me to participate in this project. My mind has been opened to all the interesting creative writing talent that is here at the Watch. As a consequence of working on the Anthology, I've been browsing the back pages of the Hall of Gifts and paying more attention to what's in there.
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I never expected such vulgarity from Furls Fire!! 
