Several rejections. That’s all. Ugh.

I also had to withdraw another story from a market that either has a response time approaching nine months, or has gone dead to the world while leaving their website up. I don’t know — could be a spam filter thing on either side. Weird.

I won’t mention who they are here, because knowing my luck, said party will come back with vitriol about how they were still sitting on my sub. Which begs the question: Why the heck didn’t you respond to my two prior queries, sent months apart?

More than likely, the magazine either only responds to acceptances, which is a practice that needs to die in this industry, or said market ghosted and left their website active without so much as a “stop submitting” heads-up.

Either way — marked as dead, moving on, slightly annoyed.

Variant Frequencies is taking another one of my tales for production. My personal thanks to the entire crew: Rick & Anne Stringer, and Matt Wallace. Feedback on “Spired” was terrific, and I’m hoping this latest effort might bring similar accolades. Some day, I’m going to find a way to thank these people back for honing my work into such a quality experience.

I won’t share which tale it is until it goes live. You’ll just have to wait and see.

In less exciting news, I’m currently editing tales two and three of the latest trifecta of stories I’m prepping for submission. This bundle has subjects ranging from pyromania to space colonization, if you’re curious.

Also, I got a rejection today from Nick Mamatas over at Clarkesworld. Once again, my ego takes a beating, but it’s needed. In my experience, when a writer thinks they have writing “figured out”, they stop growing. I endeavor to remain humble; I endeavor to listen.

So I love a rejection like this one, with its digital text bearing richly detailed feedback from a renowned pro editor. It’s bitter medicine to read as an editor takes my tale apart, of course, but its the surest long-term cure for my modest methods. Semi-pro and small press markets are great, but I’m always shooting to catch the eye of a pro publication, and I can’t do that without feedback from the same markets I’m trying to court. I don’t have the ivy-league education. Hell, I didn’t even major in English. All I have is determination, which reminds me to go over valuable feedback like this with the weight of purpose it deserves.

Well, it got bounced by Clonepod, who really enjoyed it but said it was indeed too raunchy for their intended audience. This didn’t surprise me — I warned them in the cover letter that might be the case. I appreciate their feedback, though. Always nice to hear a work induced the intended response.

I’ll shoot that podcast some more appropriate items in the future. I encourage my fellow writers to give this new market their due.

As for the tale itself, it seems this over-the-top comedy I’ve written may be too much for the fiction markets as a whole to take. I’m wondering who I’ll even send it too at this point. I need someone with a more adult audience, who has the guts to run a piece that is this far off the deep end.

Maybe you know someone?