Say hello, and tell me where you have been

Lead

The form below reaches me and nobody else. No support queue sits behind it, nobody sorts the mail into piles on my behalf, and nothing automated replies in my place. On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday afternoons I sit down with whatever has come in and work through it in the order it arrived. Writing straight to hello@wandermio.com from wherever you keep your own mail reaches the identical inbox.

Nearly everything that reaches me is one of five things, which is why the form asks you to choose: a question about a story, a correction, a note about working together, a privacy request, or something that fits none of those. Picking a subject does not route your message anywhere different or slower. It simply lets me settle the whole thing in a single reply.

Corrections are the letters I want most. A tram stops running at a different hour, a stairway closes for repair, a bakery moves two streets over, and a story written in April is out of date by September. Write down what you found and the rough week you found it, and I can confirm the change and post a fix with the date attached to it.

Before You Write

A handful of particulars turns a letter from a puzzle into a job I can finish in one sitting, and supplying them takes about thirty seconds.

• About a story: name the story, and the paragraph if you can find it. Eight of them is plenty for me to guess wrong.
• A correction: say what has changed and which month you were standing there. Season matters more than the exact date in most of these places.
• Working together: describe the shape of the idea in the first two lines. Paid placements, guest posts, and link swaps are declined every time, so save yourself the pitch.
• A privacy request: send it to filings@wandermio.com so that it starts in the correct queue. The Privacy Policy lists the details a request should carry.
• Something else: no structure needed at all. Tell me where you walked last and what the light was doing.

Plain text is plenty. Please do not attach files to a first message, since unexpected attachments stay unopened at this desk as a matter of habit. If a picture genuinely carries the point you are making, say so in the note, and a way to send it comes back with my reply.

Response Times

Desk hours are Wednesday through Friday, 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm, Eastern Time. Anything arriving on a Saturday sits unread and perfectly safe until Wednesday afternoon. Most letters are answered inside three business days, dated from the next open afternoon, and corrections jump the line, because a wrong hour or a shut stairway lands on somebody who is walking there tomorrow.

Travel weeks slow all of this down, and I would rather say so than pretend otherwise. When I am away for a stretch of days the mail sits until I am home, then gets cleared in one long sitting with the curtains open. Requests about your own data belong at the second address listed below, and they run on the timing that the Privacy Policy sets down. If two weeks pass with no word from me, write again and skip the apology. Mail does go astray, and a second note is never a nuisance here.

The number below rings on a desk in a room with one chair, not in a call center. Anything left on it outside posted hours gets a call back on the next open afternoon, oldest message first. Writing works better than calling for anything I will need to look up, mostly because I can carry a written note over to the map on the wall and stand there with it.

There are no social accounts. Wandermio keeps no profile on any social network, runs no messaging channel, and has never asked anybody to follow it anywhere. If an account appears somewhere carrying this name or these pictures, it is not mine, and a note about it is genuinely welcome at the address below. Everything published here lives on this site and nowhere else.

The Desk

Publisher: Wandermio Press LLC, a registered West Virginia limited liability company Reader mail: hello@wandermio.com Records and privacy: filings@wandermio.com Telephone: +1 (681) 273-5064 Mailing address: 1012 Kanawha Boulevard East, Suite 320, Charleston, WV 25301, United States Desk hours: Wednesday through Friday, 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm, Eastern Time Usual reply: Three business days, sooner for corrections

Postscript

Two requests turn up most months and both get a no, so naming them now beats letting you discover it after the letter is sent. I cannot reserve, hold, move, or undo any piece of a journey, because Wandermio publishes stories and arranges no travel at all. Nor can I promise you that a museum opens on a public holiday in a city I last stood in eleven months ago, since the place itself is the only honest source on that.

Everything else is fair to send, disagreement included. When a note changes a story, the correction goes up with its date on it, and I credit the reader by first name unless asked not to. Letters carrying no question at all are welcome too. A good share of what arrives is simply a paragraph about a morning somewhere, written by a person who wanted to tell someone, and those are the ones I keep in a folder and reread in February.