You Want Real? You Want My Feedback? Here it is. – Kelly Fitzharris, Editor-in-Chief

Two of my regular contributors, two writers with whom I *thought* I’d built a solid, beneficial working relationship, have recently sent ME multiple insulting, hurtful, and absolutely unwarranted defamatory messages.

BACK OFF.

*WE* are NOT becoming just like every other publication out there.

*WE* are two women working our ASSES off, entrusting each other with the not-so-simple task of managing and running the very essence that is Sick Lit Magazine.

We’re doing all of this as I traverse my own personal life’s implosion, one day at a time. Nicole AND I personally type EVERY SINGLE response to you guys.

Nicole’s style is slightly different from mine in that she doesn’t gratuitously use swear words, speak primarily in hyperbole, and, in the interest of using her time wisely, is given to brevity where I am definitely not.

This is what makes us a good team. This doesn’t make her some sort of cold-hearted, hard-shelled, reproachable asshole. Quite the opposite. She’s stepped up – and stepped in, mind you—even taking on responsibilities that weren’t necessarily asked of her or required of her for the position, but for the sole purpose of keeping my vision and my magazine alive. Afloat.

Guess what?

She and I are not so different. When I first hired her, we could not hold a phone conversation shorter than two and a half hours, full of excited chatter and puns, and she’s backed me up when no one else would. She’s cared when no one else did.

We are not doormats. Nicole is not your proverbial doormat to take your anger out on if you’ve had a shitty day and neither am I.

Going through the demise of a 12 year relationship while I have custody of my two children, aged 4 and 8, 90% of the time, is not fucking easy. So, I’ll say it again: back the fuck off with your critical, unnecessary, ridiculous assessments about what YOU think the magazine has “become.”

There are TWO women behind the curtain, folks. Nicole hasn’t SWOOPED in and stolen SLM from me. Jesus Christ.

Bottom line: I’m fed up.

Grow up. Act like adults. Don’t send emails attacking both mine and Nicole’s judgment, including how shitty you think the magazine has become, before then personally attacking both myself and Nicole, calling me a lying hypocrite, after Nicole sent you either a polite decline email that she typed out by hand (we wouldn’t know how to do automated if we tried) or another polite email that suggested a few revisions for your work.

Enough. Enough is enough is enough, damn it! The people who are guilty of this depraved behavior are individuals whom I NEVER, EVER, thought in a million years, would talk to me the way they have.

Shame on you.

(You know who you are.)

Good night.

Kelly Fitzharris (Formerly Kelly Fitzharris Coody, but, seeing as how I’m in the process of changing my name back, I’m trying to ease you all into the drop of the ‘married’ last name Coody.)

Your Editor-in-Chief

Peace.