Letter From the Editor

The sixth anniversary issue of Thrilling Detective continues to come together. This past week, stories by amigos Ray Banks and Dave White went up. Dave's been asking me--Ray's probably using telepathy--to mention their stories here. Before today, I might've said, "Congrats to Dave and Ray on two great stories. Well done." Two sentences. My internal censor's been asking, Where's the beef?

Note that Ray's story "God Put a Smile" and Dave's story "God's Dice" feature the word "God", and indeed involve Catholic themes. I did not choose these stories to make a statement, nor did I know in advance they would go live so close to Easter. It is true today being Easter Sunday spurred this entry.

As an editor, I often think about how audiences will receive text (or the broader "material"). My job is to determine what words will deliver the author's message and inflection most accurately. I have to know she meant it to sound not like that, but like this. In the case of these latest Thrilling stories, I saw that Dave and Ray wanted to go all out, a genuine treatment of the issues, not merely lip service to hot headlines.

As an editor, do I really have much control over a story? I like to answer no; it's up to the author what direction a story takes. Indeed, sometimes that direction is away from Thrilling. For better or worse, the best stories fully engage me. At this stage, their meaning for the public--sometimes including the author--matters not as much as their meaning for the characters.

This may sound extreme at first, but without meaning for its characters, a story can have no meaning for people. Characters are really more basic versions of people. I chose both stories because their events drew more out of the characters Donne and Innes. This strikes me as the reason anyone would write or read a series, to be continually surprised by characters' reactions.