hey’re dreamers, but they’re tired. They work hard, year after year, getting better at their dreams, better at communicating them, but they sometimes get discouraged. Recognition seldom comes quickly in the dreaming business. Sometimes, they wonder if it will come at all.

Who are they? They’re unpublished authors of speculative fiction—horror, fantasy and science fiction—and if it sounds like I know how they feel, that’s because I was one of them. I know the effort it takes to reach deep inside for dreams no one else has dreamed. I know the hope that comes from mailing dreams to editors. And I know the heartbreak when those dreams are tarnished by rejection. I’m all too familiar with doubt and the idea of publication seeming farfetched.