This issue's stories are chock-full of strong voice. In fact, every one of the stories we selected had such a strong voice that it was much more difficult than usual to narrow down to our typical 5-6 stories per issue.

Editors and publishers talk all the time about how they are looking for stories that have a 'strong voice' -- but what does that really mean? When you press them, it devolves quickly into the subjective -- 'You know it when you see it' or worse, 'If you don't know what I'm talking about already, then you'll never get it.'

I'll give it a shot: voice is the personality that is conveyed through the narrative. A strong voice means that the personality of the narrator comes through very strongly or powerfully. Sometimes the narrator is very present and easy to identify, like when a story is told in first-person. Martha Wells' The Murderbot Diaries is a great example of a strong first-person voice. Murderbot (the main character and the narrator) is stubborn, sardonic, principled, and thoughtful. It all comes through in the way it describes the world and events around it and how it interacts with the other characters. From this quarter's stories, "Furnace Dreams" and "Pride and PTSD" both fall into this category, with first-person narrators with very strong voices. "Furnace Dreams" brings a main character with a very unique point of view. "Pride and PTSD" has a more relatable character that brings a high-energy narration.

At the other extreme, the narrator is truly absent. The narration is purely a movie-like description of what's happening, with no internal perspective from any of the characters. You don't know what they're thinking, and you can only guess based on the description that the impersonal narration conveys. It's really tough to have a strong voice in this kind of narration because you don't get that unique point of view, and you don't get let into anyone's head at all -- the author puts a lot of work directly on the reader to figure out what each character is thinking or feeling. Pulling off a strong voice in this kind of distant narration is a feat, indeed! In our group of stories in this issue, "VOCCS" takes that to the extreme, with no narration at all. And yet the reader can grasp an enormous amount of information about the characters' frame of mind, emotional state, and even some of the things they're doing that are 'off the page.'

And in between is third-person, but where the narration is more inside one character's head than any of the others, often called 'third-person close.' Three stories fall into that category in this issue's selection -- "The Dream-Quest of Sphinx," "Grave Miscalculations," and "The One Girl." In the case of Sphinx, the narrator feels a bit more like a third party to the story -- someone observing Sphinx's adventure but very much aligned with Sphinx's worldview. In "The One Girl" and "Grave Miscalculations," the narration might be third-person, but the point of view is very much that of the main character.

Amazingly, this was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to strong-voice stories we could've chosen this quarter. That is always very exciting. For someone seeking to be published, being told your story has a strong voice is a big compliment. For any readers who wonder what the intangible thing is that makes them like one story much more than another, it may be helpful to think about whether 'voice' is the difference.

Regardless, we hope you enjoy this issue's selections!