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HeroicStories has a staff of nine people who have consistent roles to play for each issue -- and several more who have occasional roles. Some of those folks are volunteers.

Producing an issue of HeroicStories starts when the authors email their stories and receive an automated email response telling them that we have it. Then, the story is sent automatically via email to three story reviewers. They are: our steadfast volunteers Bryan Nolan in Texas, Alison Dennehy in Australia, and Joyce Schowalter in Washington. We believe it's vital to have more than one person reading the stories -- one person may notice that a story has great promise when others overlooked its potential.

Next, information about submitted stories is summarized and put into a "Voting Template", which is emailed to our current group of story reviewers. The review "votes" are emailed to Joyce Schowalter, the Editor-in-Chief, who collates and evaluates them. Occasionally, stories generate a "tie" of opinions. These are emailed for a wider perspective to: Curtis Buxton in Canada, Jules Lewis in England, Ian Chai in Malaysia, Kim in South Africa, Kit Riley in Colorado, and Lisa Pericak in New York.

After a decison, we send a note telling each author if the story was accepted or we make editing suggestions. We may notify an author that the story doesn't meet the criteria of our submission guidelines (a copied news article, for example.)

Joyce then assigns the accepted stories to the story editors. They edit them and add summary information to make it easier to ensure variety when scheduling -- we wouldn't want to run several "favorite teacher" stories in a row, for instance. Often Joyce schedules 10-15 stories in advance to help balance both topic and tone. Sometimes the schedule is changed if the situation demands it - we responded to the the 9/11 terrorist attacks by changing our scheduled lineup, and running stories submitted by readers as the events unfolded. (We were one of very few similar publications to do this.)

Our current story editors are Clayton Bennett in Minnesota, who started editing for HeroicStories in May 2002, Barbara in Maryland, and Joyce in Washington. As an extra measure to ensure our stories are edited well, Clayton reviews Joyce's stories after she edits them, and vice versa.

Once a story is edited and chosen, it's time to assemble an issue. Joyce reads all reader comments sent in response to recent stories. She chooses some to publish that represent reader sentiments. She then edits them for grammar, spelling and length, and creates the HeroicStories Comments section.

She adds that to a story, dropping both into an issue template, with the (hopefully! :-) proper issue number, date, etc. Next the ad is inserted (ads help support HeroicStories -- more info here).

Now it's time for volunteer copy reviewers. The completed issue may be emailed to one of several volunteers to check for spelling, formatting, and grammar errors. (You, too, can volunteer to review issues pre-publication, just email Comments@HeroicStories.com, with "Volunteer" in the subject line.)

Joyce then emails the issue to the Lyris email distribution server in California, which sends it out to our individual subscribers. Amazingly, over 90 percent of the 30,000+ issues are usually sent out in about ten minutes.

For other projects, our chief graphic designer is Denise Sutherland in Canberra Australia, of Sutherland Studios (see the link at the bottom of each page -- she designed this web site.) She designed our logo and created our lapel pin design -- ask for one for a present!

Denise is also our webmaster. When we identify a need for a new page (such as this one), she creates the pages and uploads them to the site. Having Denise on board is a huge plus, as we can visualize pages and have her create them quickly without significant impact on other day-to-day duties.

Historically, webmaster Leo Notenboom wrote code for HeroicStories so that we could publish our archives on our own server.

Joyce also does other publisher tasks, answering permission requests from other publishers who wish to run our stories on other web sites or in books.

Founder and former publisher Randy Cassingham hasn't disappeared, he's on tap to help out when needed. It may be a small favor, like advice on a story title. It may be something relatively large... like hosting HeroicStories' website on his own server.

HeroicStories has an email discussion list for readers, "HeroTalk". It's home to some *fascinating* discussions. Behind the scenes Joyce and Leo are capable of deleting innapropriate posts to the list (spam, advertising, etc), and, if necessary, banning the people who posted them.

Several people advise us as to the "style" of HeroicStories and its site -- that is, the look and format of both issues and the site. They are Peggy Coquet in Washington, Clayton Bennett in Minnesota, and Denise Sutherland in Australia.

Once each issue of HeroicStories is published, another wonderful circle begins. People are inspired by the stories (or sometimes are irritated by the stories :-) and send in comments. We publish many of those comments, often a scant three days after the original story was published. By doing this, we hope to deepen the insights illustrated in the original story. This truly is a remarkable part of our mission -- mission, for it allows ideas from our readers, any of us, to reach a global audience. For the same reason, we also publish reader comments with the stories when they're published in book form.

Our readers continually write to say that the reader comments have truly given them an amazing insight, lessened a burden for them, or simply brightened their day -- see some examples here.

For example, the issues we published just after September 11th 2001. In those issues, to our knowledge, we were one of the very first publications worldwide to publish condolences for the American people sent by people around the world. Our readers, in over 100 countries had written immediately. Then, in reply we received received stacks of heartfelt replies from Americans, thanking those who'd written, and expressing how helpful that empathy was to read.

Often the reader-to-reader exchanges in our comments section unfold through several levels of responses. People's replies generate both remarkable and illuminating insights which are truly inspiring to read.

The result: a consistently inspiring publication that brings hope to people all over the world -- without pushing a political or religious agenda. If you're not already a receiving HeroicStories, we invite you to take advantage of our free service using the form below. Try a few months worth of HeroicStories -- and let us know if you feel better.

If you're already receiving HS: thanks for helping to spread the word about HeroicStories, as a "Co-Conspirator to Make the World a Better Place".

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