From the introduction: Given these words of Hemingway, we sit at our keyboard before a blank screen expecting to hemorrhage some profound truth. But nothing comes and we are vastly disappointed or frustrated at our inability to write a single word or phrase. We hear the clock ticking or our phone vibrate and we curse Hemingway for his deceit. We are done. But we are not done with the staccato rhythm of Hemingway, "The cold rain kept on and killed the spring." We read the harsh tone of Hawthorne's prose, "What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart." We ponder the mood of terror painted by Poe, ." . . Falling, it was rain, but having fallen, it was blood." Like Thoreau, we find that, "Truth and roses have thorns about them." We are in the throes of discovering how great authors skillfully draw blood and the reader into their world. Writing is not opening a wound, the blood gushing and splattering randomly. There is something more to it. Rather writing is a bloodletting, a slow and visceral dripping. It is a careful crafting of words, drawing the reader in to reveal an artery of simple truths. With new understanding, we sit and write our own truth with carefully chosen words we bleed on paper. Our simple truth is what you will discover through our stories; truths that we have discovered about ourselves, and the world around us. For here on these pages, we have opened our veins and skillfully let the droplets of blood flow from our hearts. We are Bleeding Truth.