Editors Note: Heartcore is Broken A Cautionary Tale and Apology

What concerns me is the drama surrounding this anthology. As many have told me about their professions --- "It's like high school." Well, this was middle school. And so is much of writing and publishing these days. Perhaps this is heightened more in the arts because of the narcissism of those who see themselves as creators and their arrested adolescence.

I offered my services as well my offices services, free of charge, to generate contracts; to seek out writers for supplemental stories; and to set up the non-profit again without charge.

For my efforts I was ignored entirely by individuals who regularly contact me in favor of 'poor me' postings on social media. I was invited and glad to join but after months and months of publishers going in and out of the project for undisclosed reasons; for never being told the full story of what is going on; for watching writers fighting amongst themselves with a false sense of their own importance and the editors promoting other projects ahead of this one; I am disgusted.

Normally I would keep these thoughts to myself and soldier on. But I think this experience serves as a lesson. I am disappointed the project fell through as we did fail to help those we wished to; but even more so I feel betrayed by many people involved. This has been a crazy few months where similar projects have crashed for similar reasons. What seems to be happening in this genre is a lack of civility and humanity on the part of the many; thank God it is not the whole.

The whole anthology scene is becoming stranger than the fiction it promotes. Editors now openly will tell you it is proper to simply accept a submission and not respond any further. One refused to respond to me in favor of discussing his troubles with video games or wanting to write comic books on Facebook. Writers involved feel more and more that it is necessary to trash fellow writers on social media and all the while you can see their own self-exalted work suffering.

There was once, just a short time ago, a camaraderie amongst the many; unfortunately it is now with the few. Writers were a community and supportive. I have no idea what happened; I have no idea where the venom came from. Such is life.

I am confident my story will appear somewhere else soon, but all of the drama of this saga is beyond unprofessional; it is distasteful and I apologize for leading anyone astray in thinking this book would ever appear in print.

I feel used and fooled as much as you and unlike others who hit and run with sophomoric insults and soap opera antics I am here to offer my apologies.

But the best is yet to come. We have stories coming out with true professionals very soon. As I indicated at the beginning of this year, I had a sense this would be a year of transition and man has it ever.

Yes, we have made strides and the yes, the best is yet to some. Stay tuned.