ummm...I wrote something 3 years ago. Last week I modified and polished it. Would that one be acceptable?
Just wondering...why does it have to be written within the last year?
Go ahead and send it, Celesta.
In answer to your question, though: basically the purpose behind the requirement is that we want to encourage people to be writing new stuff, and submitting new stuff -- not stuff they've already stewed over a million times to no avail but gotten themselves stuck on, and not just sending whatever happens to be laying around forgotten in the bottom of a drawer. It's by writing new stuff that we keep growing as writers.
So if there's way too much great stuff for one issue, what's the odds that it'll be two volumes?
We've got a lot of really excellent stories, but we won't be doing two volumes -- the budget just won't handle it. So what'll happen is what always happens with anthologies: Some really terrific stories will get cut for no better reason than we can't buy 'em all.
But (and this is for everyone who has submitted so far) no one has sent anything appalling. As slush-reading goes, this has been a remarkably painless process so far. We've sent some rejections already -- but all the stories I'm seeing would be quite suitable to submit to most of the semi-pro markets out there. Some of the stories I'm seeing would be perfectly at home in PRO markets, as well.
If you guys aren't submitting? (And you know who you are -- you've written things to me like, "I've never submitted a story before, but...") If you guys aren't submitting, then
start.