Nope, it's not my birthday. But on May 10th, 2005, I started my reign of terror as assistant editor at Realms of Fantasy. So, in theory, I'm one year wiser when it comes to all of this editorial stuff. It's been a fun, wacky year, and I actually have learned an absolute ton about editing (and writing). And it's been a blast! Much public thanks to Shawna for giving me a chance. You're # 1, boss. Hopefully year two will be even more productive.

To commemorate the occasion, I've decided to post all sorts of meaningless statistics for everyone to drool and/or cringe over. So, shall we?

1)Total # of Stories and Pieces of Miscellanea Processed: 2222

2) Total # of Stories Passed up the Editorial Ladder: 198

3) Total # of Automatic Passes: 151

4) Total # of Slush Survivors: 47

5) Total # of Stories Accepted for Publication: 35 (Please note the latest batch has yet to be passed along to Shawna, and that Shawna has not finished going through the previous batch, so there should be a few more purchases for pieces sent along in the past year).

6) Total # of Automatic Passes Accepted for Publication: 26

7) Total # of Slush Survivors Accepted for Publication: 9

8) Total # of Slush Survivors (from my reign) to See Publication: 2

9) Total # of Rejections (from either me or Shawna): 2155 (this accounts for those stories mentioned in point 5).

10) Total # of YFOPS (from either me or Shawna): Sorry, way too lazy to dig up the #'s on this one. Maybe next year. Best guess: About 225

11) Estimated total # of BFODS: 1930

12) Average # of submissions per month: About 185

13) # of Slush Transfers (including my initial trial-run batch, which consisted of 97 pieces): 9

14) Average # of Submissions Per Slush Transfer: About 247

15) Total # of angry writer letters: 2 (yes, that's it)

16) Total pieces of fan mail to the Slushmaster: 7

17) Total pieces of fan mail to Shawna: These files are sealed. :)

Let year two begin!