Kendra sat down with her coffee, opened her laptop, and clicked on the Zoom link. She found the editor waiting for her.
“Hey Lilla!” Kendra said. “It’s nice to finally put a face to the email address.”
“Hey Kendra,” the editor said. “So, all of us here really loved your story.”
“That’s great!”
“So, I do have a few notes, though.” A cat jumped on Lilla’s shoulder and attempted to perch there like a parrot.
“Sure,” Kendra said. “Let me have it.”
“All right, so you did a good job setting up the atmosphere here. You got all five senses, well four, no wait five, you even fit some taste in there.”
Kendra could see Lila’s scrolling computer screen on the reflection of the editor’s glasses.
“I like the spooky cat. I like the pumpkin stuff.”
Kendra looked left and right and watched her Zoom eyes move half a moment later.
“We all love the creature stuff.”
“All right,” Kendra said. “Great. So far, these notes don’t seem too harsh to me.”
“Yes, that’s true,” the editor said. “Okay, though, so, you say at the beginning that the story starts at midnight on Halloween night, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, technically, that’s the morning of November 1st. And, well, this is really a ‘Halloween’ collection, and all the stories have to take place on the actual holiday.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Well, there just isn’t anything spooky about November 1st.”
“It’s still Halloween at midnight.”
“I’m sorry but our people have looked into this.”