Lakeside Circus - epilogue

Or, possibly, coda.  Maybe an afterword.  I'm really not sure.

You may recall my communications with Carrie Cuinn, Managing Editor of Dagan Books, under whose umbrella sits Lakeside Circus.  Well, Carrie issued the following email earlier this week to all affected authors:

It is with great sadness I must announce that we've decided to close Lakeside Circus, at least for now. It has always been a labor of love, with very little funding outside of my own pocketbook. I was happy to pay for as long as I could, but recent events in my personal life - being laid off, going back to college, requiring surgery - have made it so I can no longer afford to fund this project.

I hope that changes, and one day soon, I may reopen Lakeside to submissions, but I can't guarantee when. In the meantime, I'll keep the website up for as long as I can, and continue to share those wonderful stories and poems with the world. 

All accepted authors with a signed contract will of course have those contracts honored: I will pay a 50% kill fee for declining to publish your work at this time. All authors are released from the other terms of publication, and you are free to submit your work to other markets. Please be patient, though; since we're closing due to lack of funds, it may take a few months to pay everyone off. (I'll do it as quickly as possible.)

I wish you the best of luck, and I will look for your fiction out in the world.

One of my first writing tutors told me 'nothing bad can ever happen to a writer' - although, if you're like me, a list beginning with 'persistent vegetative state' quickly forms in your mind.  On that basis, I hope that the experience has made Ms Cuinn, an outlier in terms of my experience dealing with editors, somewhat wiser and wish her all the best for the future.