Every morning when I drive my son to school through downtown Austin, I pass the little yellow cottage where William Sydney Porter, best known as O.Henry, lived with his wife and daughter. It’s now a museum, pressed on one side by the convention center and the other by a towering hotel. Its fretwork is preserved; inside are artifacts of the writer’s life and work, as well as donated furnishings illustrating the period. The writer of “The Gift of the Magi” is commemorated in Austin and elsewhere, but his most important monument may not be his stories, which many readers still love, but the O.Henry Prize Stories, founded in 1918 by his friends to honor him and to “strengthen the art of the short story.” Rather than being relegated to literary history, O.Henry will always be associated with the current masters and promising talent in contemporary writing.

There are intimidating aspects of being series editor of the O.Henry, the job I began in 2002. The editorship carries with it a responsibility to the writers of the many short stories submitted each year, to the magazine editors, and to the readers of the annual collection who expect a variety of excellent, challenging, and moving stories. My principal mission is to believe in writers and the original ways the best of them find to face the ancient challenge of telling a story.

In an era of declining budgets and declining readership, publishers always look to cut costs and inevitably return to an ongoing debate about whether it is financially sound to send first-time authors out on tour. As a debut novelist, contact between myself and my publisher revolved around the editorial and publicity staff, so I cannot answer this question definitively. But one thing is certain, I’m very glad they decided to send me out on tour because I’ve learned such a lot.

While on the road with A Son Called Gabriel, I’ve experienced both stinging lows and delicious highs and am now convinced the root of a new author’s humiliation is to be found at the entrances of bookstores. Always, as I approached them, voice warmed up and passages rehearsed to perfection, my stomach churned in anticipation of whether any people would show that evening. And this anticipation sometimes became the writer’s dreaded reality when I’d squint into the cavernous events room teeming with empty chairs and a mound of novels, a smiling employee poised at the front ready to soothe my ego with one of a triumvirate of reasons, too rainy weather, too hot weather, or too windy weather.

Of course, such embarrassments were instantly forgotten on those evenings when I’d walk into an event hoping for five attendees only to discover a cornucopia of book lovers, all of whom hung on my every word and followed up with brilliant questions. It’s events like that which make authors want to keep writing, and most of us never want the thing to end, even forget the reason why the bookstore has us at the store in the first place.