2024 is my year of short stories. In this weekly series, I talk about the stories I’m working on, from idea and draft to submission.
- Stories in Progress – 2
- Submissions This Week – 0
- Submissions Currently Out – 2
- Rejections This Year – 14 (7 personalized)
A Month Of Responses
As I mentioned in my previous post, I took a writing break in June, so my works in progress are still in progress. I haven’t sent anything new out, but I did receive several responses.
For “The Incident at Pleasant Hills,” I received a very positive personalized rejection, indicating I had gotten past several rounds of evaluation. This confirms to me that the story is solid, and this is a publication I should keep in mind for future submissions.
“Dr. Clipboard’s Miracle Wonder Drug,” received a rather strange rejection that was generally positive about the story, but concluded that it didn’t fit the editors’ definition of the fantasy genre. To my sensibilities, it’s more of a modern fantasy or new weird story, but this response makes me think it might be worth trying some “softer” sci-fi magazines as well.
“The Bluefinch and the Chipmunk” received a form rejection.
My drabble, “Tom, Dick, and Larry,” has the distinction of being the first submission of the year that didn’t get a response at all. A few magazines state in their submission guidelines that they won’t respond for rejections, but this was not one of them. It’s possible that the story got lost in the shuffle, or the response was eaten by internet goblins or spam filters. I’ll be sending a query to see if I can get a clear response.
Goals for Next Week
- Send a query to get the status of “Tom, Dick, and Larry”
- Re-send all the stories that came back to me
- Get back into the writing groove and work on at least one short story
Words Deferred 