I won’t lie, for a while there I was thinking how much fun it was making a pretty website and playing with graphics and creating buzz online. Then a day before subs opened I was proper anxious, because I was about to be entrusted with writer’s words. I know how that feels, to send your treasures into the world, especially to a fledgling magazine. I know how that feels so I wanted to get it right. Then subs opened and damn, what an amazing experience being on the “other side”.

I read 110 submissions in total. We actually reached our caps. That felt pretty amazing. After taking time to make initial decisions, I dropped around 15 pieces into a folder shared by the Trash Cat Team. They could then jump in whenever they had a moment and put extra eyes on one or more contenders. They added their comments and feedback which helped me choose the final pieces. A huge thank you to Mat Gostelow, Jo Clark and Terry Holland for reading, commenting and working with authors on final edits.

So, what helped me make decisions? It’s hard to pin down. I knew what I didn’t want in the magazine, but was kind of vague on what I did want beyond good story. It’s not easy to qualify what that means, and indeed it may mean something different for every Editor or reader (in fact there were a couple of disagreements between the team).

Lack of story was a fairly common issue with the declined submissions. There were beautiful settings, lyrical language, interesting openings and premises – but then nothing really happened. In several cases I found it difficult to engage with characters because I couldn’t picture them or hear their voice.

That’s when I realised what makes a good story for me and for Trash Cat – character, voice. That’s what drives the narrative, makes you want to read on, know more, and what lingers long after reading.

What I hope you’ll see from the final twelve is that what connects them, even in their differing subjects and styles and structures, is voice. I never knew how important that was to me as a reader until I had 110 pieces to work through. The voice of the narrator has to grab me, intrigue me, horrify me, move me. Whatever it might be. I have to hear them and be captivated, motivated to know their story – even if it’s just a glimpse of a moment of a time.

These final twelve authors are masters at drawing their character/s and telling those characters’ stories with few words. No space was wasted. They were distilled to their most potent versions. I couldn’t have hoped for a more exciting, enticing and exquisitely written final issue. Those pieces will now go a long way to showing what TCL is about, what we want to grace the walls of the bin.

I also have to commend our final contributors for being so quick to respond to their acceptance emails and engage in collaborative editing. There were no delays, no panicked chasing, which meant I was able to send out notifications to all submitters soon after closing the window. I know how it feels to wait, to wonder – again I wanted to get that right.

It also gave me the opportunity to select a couple of pieces to receive feedback. Picked from that team-shared folder, they were just pipped in the final selection and our Trash Badger, Jo Clark did an amazing job of putting together some comments and suggestions for three submitters. We hope to do that more often.

Honestly though, the response to the decline emails was the most surprising – a whole cadre of people coming together online to celebrate their TCL decline. That was special.

So, Issue One is published and the next submission window is for Winter 2024, opening 1^st October. There’s a theme for this one – Monstrous – all the details are under the Submissions tab on the website. I can’t wait to see all the interpretations. All the great stories.

Thank you again to everyone who submitted to Trash Cat Lit’s inaugural issue. I want to say a special (anonymous) shoutout to the writer who submitted something that made me laugh harder than I have in a long time (I lost my voice!). I had to decline their piece because the issue was shaping up to be filled with all the serious human stuff, and that delirious gem would have stood out for all the wrong reasons. I told the author this, and how much I loved it, and how I might even schedule a humour-only issue sometime soon, because stuff that makes you feel like that, lose yourself in laughter, especially when the world is so bleak, is to be celebrated. So watch this space if you write the funny stuff…

That’s all from the bin for now. If you haven’t read Issue One yet, grab some snacksies and get on it! Let those voices in your head.

JP Relph