Dear Reader,

Welcome to The Bloomin’ Onion’s second issue—Issue Two: Night and Day.

The “night and day” theme emerged organically as I worked through edits on these pieces, and I’m glad it did. It feels very reflective of the world at the moment—sometimes you’re up, and sometimes you’re down. Some of the pieces are fun and light-hearted, such as Aishani Sil’s “The Tummy Ache” and Jamie Good’s “The Frog With Unusually Long Legs,” and then some pieces are heavier, such as Kaitlyn DeVries’ “Land of Stories” and Douglas DuBois’s “The Mission.” Overall, there is something in this issue for everyone.

After the personal excitement I took from editing Issue One, I wondered if there would be a decrescendo into Issue Two. There wasn’t. While some additional challenges presented themselves while navigating life throughout the summer and adding our upcoming poetry branch, everything ultimately came together really well. I’m happy to be able to support the Issue Two writers along their journeys and am thrilled to be able to continue doing so for other writers in the future. Yes, I founded The Bloomin’ Onion, but having this opportunity to make a positive impact in the literary community is extremely fulfilling. If you get the chance to do something similar, take it.

I would also like to echo a sentiment I discussed in the preface for Issue One. This collection of stories is among the best we’ve seen so far, but that doesn’t mean the stories we rejected were bad. We try to publish what we believe to be the best work, be an inclusive and open community, and support all writers (especially emerging writers) as best we can. The unfortunate reality of running a literary magazine is that, despite wanting to help everyone, you just can’t. This pains me to my core. I see so much work that’s on it’s way, or has a spark of something great, but, as backwards as it sounds, we must do less in order to do more. We would not be able to offer editing if we accepted all stories—it would just be a situation where we copied and pasted stories from a Word document onto our site, and that would dilute the value of being accepted for publication. As a writer myself, I pine for the joy of finding that acceptance letter in my email, but it’s only special because I received 973 rejections before it arrived. If you’re a writer and you’re reading this, please keep going. The world needs to hear your voice, and you deserve to be heard. There is room in the literary community for you, I promise.

Thank you again, dear reader, for spending some time with The Bloomin’ Onion, and I hope you enjoy reading these stories as much as I have compiling them for you.

Sounding my Barbaric Yawp,

Daniel Groves