See if this sounds familiar:  You’ve worked hard on a story, dumping your heart and soul into each word, turning it into the next great short story masterpiece that publishers would kill for. You send your story off and wait for the publishing contract to arrive. And you wait. And you wait. And you wait…

Then the letter arrives!  It’s in the SASE you sent with the story, but that’s okay, the publisher is probably trying to save money now that he’s going to pay you tons of cash for your story. You rip open the envelope, being careful to not tear the check you KNOW is in there, and...

Good grief! A rejection!  You wait for your brain to register what just happened. Then you scream "Why? Why? Why?" at the form letter, but it doesn't answer (it's just a dumb form letter, after all).

Editors are people too.  No, really, they are. They work hard, they read lots of stories every day, and just like you they get tired as the day wears on. That is not the time to hit the editor with spelling/grammatical errors, unoriginal storylines, and dialogue that makes him shudder.

This is where we come in!  Our experienced (over 1500 stories edited and critiqued!) editor can take a look at your manuscript and tell you what he thinks about it. And since he's not related to you, he'll be honest and upfront with you. Sometimes brutally so. Okay, maybe not brutally, but he will be honest with you.

Okay, let's take some of your questions!

So, what will your brutally honest editor do with my story?  First, he'll read it. Really read it. Doesn't sound like much, but haven't you wondered in the past if an editor actually read your story?
   Second, he'll fill out a ratings sheet where six (6) aspects of your story will be rated on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 is great, 1 is...not so great). This is the same scale we use in rating our Annual Short Story Contest entries. The six rating "categories" are Originality, Dialogue, Descriptions, Spelling and Grammar, Story Flow, and Characters.
   Third, he'll write you at least one letter. Yes, a letter (please note the lack of the word "form" here). He will explain any unusually low ratings, give you detailed--sometimes sentence-by-sentence--suggestions on changes that will help your story shine, and any other comments he feels necessary.

Why should your editor care about my story?  Our poor editor reads stories all the time. Story...after...story...after...story...after...you get the idea. And it grieves him greatly the number of stories he sees as “reject-probable”; not because of the subject matter or writing style, but because of things like an overabundance of spelling mistakes, an unoriginal story line, unreal dialogue, etc.

So, my story gets polished and the editor feels better, what's it all cost?  Just thirty dollars ($30.00) for a story less than 5,000 words long. That's right, thirty dollars. Not a bad price, when you consider other editing services that will give you a lot less for your money.
     And you can submit your story for editing either through snail mail or save postage and submit online! If you would like to submit through email, please drop us an email for instructions.

Wow, sounds good. Any disclaimers?  Of course, there are ALWAYS disclaimers, but we don’t have to put ours in fine print!
     Your story must be FICTION and 5,000 words or less. We might do longer stories later, but right now we're sticking with the shorter ones.
     It must be your story. 
     You'd be surprised how many people try to pass off someone else's story as their own! 
     We do not guarantee that, after we're done with it, your story will be accepted somewhere for publication. No one can guarantee that. We do, however, pledge to help your story along the path to publication by letting it shine a bit brighter, and hopefully have a better chance of capturing a publisher's eye.
     Stories we edit will not be accepted into our Annual Short Story Contest. That would not be fair.
     We reserve the right to not edit a story we might consider offensive. However, since we're all adults here, the story would have to be VERY bad for us to turn it down.