Page:Weird Tales Volume 7 Number 5 (1926-05).djvu/140



HE coupons at the end of The Eyrie are functioning well. They are giving us a good working knowledge of the type of stories that you, the readers, DON'T like, as well as the type you DO like; and they will thus work to the mutual benefit of both Weird Tales and its readers.

The tale in the March issue that has been most praised and blamed, cussed and discussed, is Lochinvar Lodge, by Clyde Burt Clason, the cover design story for that issue. A furious battle has raged among the readers regarding this story. It received a great many votes, but there were also a great many complaints; and as each complaint removes one vote, there is little left for Lochinvar Lodge in the final scoring that determines the favorite story of the readers in that issue.

"Lochinvar Lodge has a bad ending, and needs a sequel," writes one reader. "It is a wonderful story, but a rotten ending," writes H. G. Campbell, of Portsmouth, Virginia. "Lochinvar Lodge should never have been published unless the sequel was already written and in the office safe," writes C. M. Eddy, Jr., of Providence, Rhode Island. Seabury Quinn threatens to send de Grandin down into that dark hole in Lochinvar Lodge to find out what has become of the girl and the bearded dwarf unless Mr. Clason writes a sequel and solves the mystery himself. "The story has no satisfactory ending or explanation," writes Dr. P. A. Fagone, of Portland, Maine. "A wonderful story if it is true," writes Miss Edith Smith, of Houston, Texas. "The ending leaves too much to the imagination," writes Raymond Lester, of New York City. "Of all your good stories this one started out to be the best, but turned out to be the worst," writes Lee Byrd, of Lima, Ohio.

The story does not lack for defenders; in fact, the letters of enthusiastic praise outnumber the complaints. But so many are the coupons and letters that protest against leaving the ending of the story "hanging up in the air," that we have sent back to their authors two other stories against which the same complaint might be made, to have the endings clarified. The use of the coupons at the end of The Eyrie has made your demand very emphatic that the story endings shall not be vague or indefinite. Every bit of advice or criticism is always carefully studied. If only one or two readers object to a story, the objection may be merely a personal dislike; but if five or ten persons write in to voice a complaint against a story, we feel sure that the story has failed to make the mark with many hundreds who did not write in; and when forty or fifty persons vote against a story, and all for the same reason, then the readers have uncovered a fault in the story that will help