I've mentioned before my desire to get a 100-worder into a future issue of Necrotic Tissue. Well, I'm delighted to report my story titled "Adagio" was accepted and will appear in the January 2010 issue. Thanks so much to the fine folks at Necrotic who do so much to support new writers.
In other news, I got probably the most positive and detailed rejection of my brief career from Ben Phillips at Pseudopod. Among other things, he said he found the story "heavy-handed at moments" but also said there were things he liked about it a great deal, and then went on to detail those things. I suspect it's probably not appropriate to reply to a rejection (and I didn't) but I truly appreciate the time that he took to enlighten me about why he didn't buy it. I'll be submitting to them again.
Perhaps the worst news of the week is in regard to maybe the best story I ever wrote. Accepted into an anthology that has been languishing at the publishers for close to a year, long story short, the editor sent an e-mail to all of the authors stating the publisher would not be going ahead with the anthology. The story itself is quite long and quite niche, so I'm not sure where to go with it. I'll give the editor another month or two to see if he can find another home for it before pulling it and seeing about placing it elsewhere.
I began putting together query letters for the novel I noted in my last posting, only to discover I'd already been rejected by each of the agents I pulled up on AgentQuery. So I set that effort aside for the moment. I have been thinking about perhaps combining the novel (which is relatively short at 55,000 words) with a couple of short stories and perhaps marketing it as a collection.
I confess I'm also contemplating self-pubbing the damn thing at Createspace to just be done with it. Yes, I know it will simply disappear as if it never existed at all. But as I found out this morning, I'm literally running out of agents. And it would be nice after all this time to simply hold a bound copy in my hand. Course Kinko's can do that too.
Not writing much of anything lately, though I'd like to get something to Shroud while that submission window is still open. Got something half-finished that might be up their alley. I'll let you know!
9 comments:
Bryan Gilmer self-published his mystery, Felonious Jazz, as a kindle book, and has made very nice sales. He's currently listed as #32 in Kindle Mysteries.
His strategy: sell it cheap and sell a bunch.
So...self-publish? Dunno, but it can be done.
Congrats on the NT acceptance, by the way--nice one.
Thanks so much, Aaron, and congrats to you on Absent Willow.
Interesting info about Gilmer. I'll check him out.
congrats brendan. eventually all your stories/books will find homes. at least that is what i keep telling myself :^)
Thanks, Samantha! Ya know, I think you're more right than wrong.
With "Dead Worlds" I was simply lurking the Permuted message board when I saw the listing. I would not have known about it otherwise. I do think a lot of it is just being in the right place at the right time.
Congrats on your acceptance. :)
Thanks, Catherine!
I had threatened . . . err . . . promised them I would continue submitting 100-worders until they printed one. I think maybe they just said "Uncle!"
Congrats on the 100 word piece to NT! That's one of my goals, as well. And they're always so gracious, every single time that they reject me. Last time they politely said, "You know, there are other places that take 100 word stories!"
I was dissuaded, but perhaps you've inspired me to take it up again. ;)
-Mercedes
Thanks, Mercedes!
And yeah, like I said . . . they were gonna keep hearing from me whether they wanted to or not.
Keep at it!
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