After Adrienne Miller left the magazine three years ago to concentrate on her own work, Esquire's fiction editor position lay dormant. Until now, as the NY Post's Keith Kelly reports that David Granger will take the helm at a time when Esquire plans to double its fiction offerings from three this year to six in 2007. "We're trying to get much more aggressive about fiction," said Granger. "We're going to be assigning original stories rather than just taking them over the transom or picking them from agents."

To prove his point, he's done just that, signing crime novelist James Lee Burke to debut his New Orleans-themed short stories, and the November issue features a quirky story from Litblog Co-Op winner Michael Martone called "The Death of Derek Jeter". "It's a fictional version of what would happen if the beloved Yankee shortstop died," said Granger, written with nine different scenarios.