Thank you so much Agnes Louis. In the meantime watch this space, that is, WEIRDACRE. I have a couple of submissions from a new writer, whose nom de plume, as it happens, is also Quasimodo. I found him because I occasionally search Medium on Quasimodo, just because. Anyway he had only one story but it is the most beautifully sad and haunting thing I have read in a long time, and I told him as much. We began exchanging PMs and although it is not for the contest he asked me to publish it in WEIRDACRE. It is difficult to edit because he is a non-native English speaker and such writers often choose striking turns of phrase that are quite unlike anything a native speaker would think of but are not overly ungrammatical and you just don’t want to disturb such poetry! It reminds me of when we had this brilliant German exchange student who used to have me edit her papers. At one point I said, to her, “Kirsten, no native speaker would put it that way but you just have to leave it alone because it is so fresh and original!” She was reluctant but I was able to persuade her.

New Quasimodo is 20 years old and working on a degree in science and math. Or something. I’m sure he is brilliant at that also.

Anyway I have an additional submission to read later, which I printed out so I could copy edit it on the train. I can’t get either published until much later because I will be away from my laptop all day.

I’m so excited by this!