No pressure, Holly. But it's down to you to keep Iberospherical afloat! To be honest it's quite good that it just ticks/stutters along, as I don't want to have to spend too much time on it. May/June started getting pretty busy, and if it had grown from there, I would have had to think about an extra editor and all the coordination hassle that would involve.

The diminishing boost returns mean there are fewer submissions.

As far as I can tell, aside from the 'I'm the one to tell this story', which would clearly still qualify for 'I was at the Fallas - here's my first-person account', they seem more fussy now about two things (though I should probably give up trying to theorise about what they are after, as it's like herding cats).

1) Simple narrative structure - they don't like ideas branching off or taking detours and doglegs.

2) Relevance to the average Jo(e) in the US of A. Their cultural blinkers seem to be getting narrower (which is perverse, as the MPP expands globally).

It's maybe what you would call the 'dentist's waiting room test'. Imagine each story is a magazine cover on the table in the waiting room (old days, before smartphones). Would the average, random patient feel 'that's relevant to me' and pick it up?

It's maybe not a bad criterion, but the whole point of logging data and having topic tags is that you can channel stories not to 'a random passerby', but someone who specifically registered their interest in that subject. They don't seem to want to do that - there's a lowest common denominator factor at play.

Those are my latest thoughts, anyway.

¡Felices fiestas!