issue 33

Time for a little KISS

Here at Vestal Review, we are big fans of KISS.

No, not the defunct '70s rock group with the face paint and Gene Simmons' impressive tongue; rather, the acronym. K.I.S.S.: Keep It Simple, Stupid.*

That being said, I must confess that, when we changed our format to a quarterly on-line/two-issue-yearly print magazine, we found ourselves drowning in complications. Issue numbers, dates, formats, decisions on what would go live and what would be seen only in print—almost immediately, our romance with short-short fiction lost its KISS.

And so, we will, after this edition, become an entirely twice-a-year magazine, to appear fully in print and not-so-fully on-line, all at the same time. Our next print issue will appear in January; the one after that in July, and so forth. All print editions will contain 12 wonderful flash stories.

Our next on-line issue will also appear in January, and thereafter in July, etc. Each on-line edition will contain 12 wonderful flash stories—but on-line readers will only be able to read six of them.

The numbers of simultaneous print and on-line issues will be the same.

Much simpler. No loss of quantity or quality, since the number of stories published each year will be the same, if not higher, than it always has been. Just a loss of frequency. And a hearty encouragement for you to buy the print magazine, so you won’t miss a single marvelous word.

*Disclaimer: Vestal Review does not hereby imply that any of its reading audience—or even its editorial/production staff—is Intellectually Challenged. We hope you accept, as we do, that the term "stupid" here applied is merely utilized in a quasi-humorous/cool/snarky manner to fulfill the acronymical aspects of the word/phrase K.I.S.S., recognizing that without it, the remaining acronym would spell K.I.S., which means nothing, and would therefore not only fail as an acronym, but present pronunciation problems (Kiz? Kiss?) that would render it more problematic than humorous/cool/snarky. We apologize profusely to anyone who might find the phrase 'Keep it simple, Stupid' offensive in any way, and hasten to add that we at Vestal Review did not coin it, and therefore do not take direct responsibility for such potential offense, given that such potential offense was and is not our intention. (I hasten to add that, given the current climate of literary plagiarism, we are hereby disclosing our lack of authorship. However, alas, although we searched extensively, we were unable to find the name of the original author for attribution. For this we also apologize, equally profusely.) We also suggest that, because you, our readers, are indeed several cuts above the ordinary in intellect, you should certainly understand our lack of offensive intention, and our knowledge of your superior reasoning power.