I completed the first draft of a story called “Millie Floating” in the fall of 2004. In those days, my goal was to edit a project until I had a final draft, at which time I could send it out to publications until someone accepted it. That was naive and wrong.

Fast forward nearly two decades. “Millie Floating,” a weird little story about a guy who wonders if his wife has murdered the family dog, was published in the Toho Literary print collection, The Best Short Stories of Philadelphia 2021. It would never have been published if I’d stuck with that final draft theory.

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