The Angels of St. Ambrose got rejected yesterday by Leading Edge magazine.  Leading Edge is an excellent publication, in my opinion.  As an educator, I love the fact that Leading Edge uses creative writing students as reviewers.  I got five full sheets of comments from students who had read the paper (and ultimately rejected it).  Many of the comments were positive, and some were not.  In general, I found myself disagreeing with the constructive criticism, but that’s okay.  I really appreciate the time the students put into carefully reviewing the story, and I want to honor that commitment on their parts.  I do have one beef however.  On the first page of the story, to describe the fear the protagonist is feeling, I use the phrase, “And Thomas’ felt his balls shrink shrunk up tight as he realized that it was not his breath… but another’s.”  Four of the five reviewers were really put off by that the use of the word “balls.”  One even called it, scatological.  Now, perhaps I should have kept in mind that Leading Edge is at Brigham Young University, and BYU’s largely Mormon student body might be more easily offended by such language, but I really think that balls works there.   The protagonist (a young boy) is in a terrifying situation in this case.  Young boys processing their terror in moments like these don’t think about their testicles, they think about their balls.  I guess ultimately I’d hate to think they rejected the story because of Thomas’ balls, but the comments weren’t specific about what exactly led to rejection.  No worries, though.  The story is already off to GUD.  And I really am thankful for all the feedback.