... I may have just committed a sartorial battle between Agnieszka & Sarkan from Uprooted and Shoe & Fisk from Foreign Devils....

it was for a good cause? I think? oi.

Can a story still be noir if my character turns herself in?

I would say very much yes. Especially if it is internally driven - i.e. not save someone else but because she can't live with what she has done.

Or if someone even more evil forced her into it.

It's some of both, I think.Would love to get past stories that are "fine," but I know it wasn't that long ago, I may have used a different "F". Still, nobody goes out of their way to publish and reward "fine,"

Nothing in that which can't be *great* Noir, depending upon the story as a whole.

I'm proud of it, but, at the same time, there are so fewer markets now that I really need something unique, but apparently not the whole wheelchair thing(I've got one place that really wants that, but they pay diddley and squat, and I know the editor so that's like, I don't know, another friend doing me a favor...which is nice, but even I don't have time to befriend every magazine editor in America, and it also makes me feel that the work doesn't stand on its own. Which I know other writers do worry about, but other writers? Haven't gotten as much done for them by people trying to be nice, make them feel included, etc.

Many writers, especially those coming from fandom, get started by having their stuff looked at by people they know. If you get something published by a friend, and you don't have an alternative market do it. That can help the next thing you write get looked at by someone who isn't a friend. Editors don't have time to look at everything. You already had something published in EQ, and some stuff other places. The more you can be published, the more you can include in a query letter, to get your stuff directly to editors bypassing slush pile. I mean I have not been able to pull it off myself, but this is something every book on "how to be an author" says: the more you are published the more you can get published.

I'm pretty sure HP Lovecraft was first published by people he knew. A lot of the writers from the 50s and early sixties got published through friends. Harlan Ellison got a lot of help breaking through from Dorthy Parker, for example. So having a friend who is editor at a small mag give you a break is small potatoes by comparison.

Last point: doubt he uses your stuff cause he knows you. He *looks* at your stuff because he knows you. He will use your stuff only if he thinks it is good. If his pub pays writers bubkis, that means editors get paid at least starvation wages. Which he ain't going to risk by publishing anything less than the best he can get.