Seeing Sonny Brewer

Driving home from the airport late yesterday my wife said, Hey, there's Sonny Brewer.

The author-editor-bookseller was standing on the sidewalk near Julip's restaurant talking on a cell phone, so I wheeled into the parking lot to say hello. Sonny lives in Fairhope, so I don't often see him in Jackson except during August for the release of the latest Stories from the Blue Moon. Sonny was the first editor to send a short story back to me and say, If you'll work with me, work hard on editing and rewriting, I'll publish this story. So I give Sonny a lot of credit for starting me out in the fiction publishing world. I know how many magazines claim that they are looking for the great young writer, the great new author, but the reality is that many of the editorial boards are overwhelmed and often staffed by students. Giving the unpublished writer the time it takes to read an extra few pages does happen, but if the pile is high it happens less frequently. The editors are forced to find some way to work through the piles of manuscripts and seeing publication credits on a cover letter is one way that helps. I've been there. I've seen it in action when I was on the editorial staff of The Black Warrior Review and as editor/publisher of Baltic Avenue Poetry Journal. AFter circulating stories for a couple of years with no success, I added to my cover letter that I had a story coming out in Sonny's anthology. Perhaps it was only coincidence that the next two stories I sent out were accepted. I can't say. Or perhaps working with Sonny made my writing that much better. Who knows? But I do know that thirty or forty rejection slips followed by three acceptances in a row is quite a coincidence.

So back to Sonny...we talked and hugged when I told him of the collection of stories I'd had accepted for publication, one of which is The Turkey Hunt that Sonny selected for Stories from the Blue Moon Cafe IV. Sonny was in town meeting with Johnny Evans at Lemuria (www.lemuriabooks.com), which some say is the best damn bookstore in the nation.

If you haven't read Sonny's work, you should. Go to www.overthetransom.com to read about his novels and other work....and you might enjoy seeing how Lemuria is supporting the literary world so check out their site and look at the writers who sign and read there....