Editor’s Eye: David James

I was frankly surprised, pleasantly so, when Ms. Elvy asked me to take a turn at Editor’s’ Eye. I basically just hang out on the outskirts of your fine Writers’ Community here and I don’t write often but when I do I value Fictionaut as a place to take off the training wheels and see how the piece looks on the elegant page upon which our work gets posted. Maybe as I do, most of us enter the Fictionaut site with a flash fiction and/or a short poem expectation and that doubtless means that longer pieces do not get the number of “reads” the shorter pieces do — which is too bad. I look to Fictionaut for exceptional writing and each time I open the site some is here, waiting for me.

Linear-Critic by Ann Bogle

What I enjoy about Ann Bogle’s work is that she continually surprises me with both the form and unique content of her stories.

At the Syria Mosque by Chris Okum

Each time I open Fictionaut I immediately look for Chris Okum’s work which interstices humor and real names placed into situations that are usually so intense that, as I read, I forget to breathe.

Forever-Four-Eyed by Roz Warren

I had not read Roz Warren’s work before and I’m really happy to find this well-told story in which she cites the diminution of eyesight and the increasing fuzziness of words. This line makes me smile with each reading: “I even wear them when I swim.”

The Princess of Fillmore Street by Randall Stickrod

The twists and turns of this strange, convoluted relationship kept me off balance – in a good way. I left the story hoping he would be done with Sarah, thinking, but he probably won’t be.

On-Being-Offered-a-Seat-on-the Bart-Train by Joanne Jagoda

I’m sure some of us, as we age,  appreciate a compliment and in our mind imagine it to mean a bit more than its intent. This poem lets us imagine more than is meant and returns us back to reality.

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David James resides in Atlanta , Georgia, and upon entering the third trimester of his life he’s found himself reading a lot and often staring at walls. He sometimes maintains his magazine-type blog. He has had just three stories published. Two pieces were picked up by Barry Basden and ran in Camroc Press Review in 2012 and 2013, respectively, and one piece was picked up from Fictionaut by editor Cheryl Anne Gardner and published in Apocrypha Abstractions in 2011.

Editor’s Eye is curated by Michelle Elvy (Fictionaut profile here). She writes and edits every day at michelleelvy.com, and readers can also find her editing Blue Five Notebook (with Sam Rasnake) and Flash Frontier.