out of gas – a letter from the editor

	"Sometimes things just fall into place." This commonplace optimism, however true, has an inverse corollary: sometimes things just fall apart. All by themselves -- easily, naturally, organically. This is not necessarily a less optimistic outlook. Why not let things fall apart? Do we really know better? If we accept it when success comes naturally, it would be dishonest of us to struggle when failure comes naturally as well.
	D.F.L., if you couldn't tell, is not a large operation. I reach out for help once in a while, but really it's just me. And because I knew this would be the case before I started, I tried to keep it small. No big ambitions, no big egos; posting submissions online when they came, printing books that no one else would print, always making it abundantly clear to my authors beforehand that we were not going to sell a ton of copies. When we first started I went out of my way to solicit submissions from writers I knew or admired; after a while they started to come in on their own; I updated the website once every two weeks, at my own leisurely pace; and everything was going well, or well enough, or about as well as I had hoped
	In the meantime, however, my life got very complicated. As the kids say, it "came at me fast." Without going into detail, let's just say that when I started D.F.L. I was in a place where I felt like I had infinite time and infinite money, and I no longer feel this to be the case. Some of the changes in my life have been good (I am getting married), some of them not so good (I lost the job which afforded me both infinite time and money). So thank God I never had more ambition at the start, because then D.F.L. would have fallen apart even quicker. Instead it fell apart slowly and gracefully.
	Here's what I mean. I'm really just being dramatic about it. Editors are a dramatic species. D.F.L. did not drag me into debt, did not interfere with my personal life in any way. But – funny thing – as my life became more and more difficult, the submissions slowly stopped coming in. And, being already overwhelmed, I wasn't sad to see them go. See what I mean about easy, natural, organic?
	We are out of gas; there is nothing more in the tank. This is not a call for submissions – keep them! send them somewhere else! I don't want them! – but I still feel an editorial obligation to say something about it.
	I am, of course, immensely proud of everything we've done with D.F.L. All of the books I have published – criminally underrated, every single one of them, and that is why I published them – will remain up for sale. Even as I post fewer and fewer updates, the books continue to sell at their own modest pace. I can't explain this, but I am very happy about it. The website still receives a decent amount of traffic – God only knows from where – so that will stay up too. I have one more book to publish (my own) and then I'm going to walk away for a little bit. 
	I am hoping, in the future, if I ever find myself in a situation where I again have time and money, to resurrect D.F.L. So many people need publishing. I myself am working on a book that certainly no one else would ever touch. One day I'd like to print an anthology of my favorite pieces from the website. And after that, who knows? One book every year or two, maybe. But I'll have to get my feet back under me first, and there's no timeline for how long that is going to take.
	Much thanks to everyone who ever submitted, everyone who ever read the site, everyone who ever bought a book. I hope I've inspired someone, somewhere, to whatever small degree, to take literature seriously. I launched my irrelevant micropress following the example of other irrelevant micropresses, so it's not unrealistic to think that this chain of literary quixoticism will continue just fine without me. Publishing is a game of perfectionism – every margin, every paragraph, every word placed just right – and I am proud to say that it is the pursuit of perfection and nothing less that has worn me out. 


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