Just received the email (4am in the morning no less!) from Tattoo Highway.

congratulations! “liturgy of the abandoned” has tied for 2nd place in our “picture worth 500 words” contest.

Sweet! I’ll post when I know for sure the publication date.

And I get paid!

I have had a submission out to the “Slow Magazine” (not the real name obviously!) for quite a while – since February of 2007 as a matter of fact. This particular piece is a long poem, which they specifically state they like in their guidelines. Because I am anal (and my handwriting sucks!) I had printed labels for both the to and return envelopes, I included postage for a reply, and dropped it in the mail slot. (Well, really, I gave it to to post office lady over the counter, if we are going to be specific.) Although I have a tendency to go over my Duotrope tracker and see how long my submissions have been out, I really don’t stress over them, well, until they get to a year or so, and then I start to wonder.

I have one other story that has been out for a year, to BUST Magazine. However, in this case, as it was an electronic submission, I shot them off a polite email in December inquiring about the status of my submission:

I am writing to inquire about a submission for your “One-Handed Read” I sent in February of this year, “Story Title.” I was wondering if I could find out if it was still in the consideration process?

Thank you very much for your reply – I appreciate your taking the time to let me know.

I very promptly received an email reply that stated:

thanks for contacting BUST! It is still in our folder for consideration.

thanks again

So, I know they still have the story, it is still in consideration, and while I will still look at it in my submission tracker, I’ll be waiting a while to inquire again. It is a glossy mag, and I can wait to hear

However, my submission to the “Slow Magazine” is a different story. Part of that story is its dismal Duotrope stats. Of the 26 responses that have been reported, over half were assumed rejections and withdrawals, and of the assumed rejections, the average time was almost 400 days. Yowsers. If you know Duotrope, you know those are some sucky stats. Now granted, I did look at those numbers, and wonder if I should attempt it, but I figured what the hey, long poems are harder to find markets for, and who knows, it might get in there.

Yeah.

So, while years ago I did have a non-responsive email-submitted market (Literal Latte – which is also on Duotrope’s list of low-responsive markets - they didn’t respond to a follow-up email either), I hadn’t yet encountered a snail-mail submission market that not only hadn’t responded, but had such low response stats. I looked all over their website, and couldn’t find an email where I could even ask about inquiring about my submission. So, I thought about it, and sent them a snail-mail inquiry (on printed envelopes, with postage on the return envelope as well), and I said:

I am writing to inquire about the status of a long poem that I submitted to the “Slow Magazine” on February, 26th, 2007, titled “This Long Poem.” I would like to know if this piece is still being considered, or if it was lost in the mail. If I have not heard of the status by April 1, 2008, I will be withdrawing it from consideration and submitting it elsewhere. Enclosed is an SASE for your reply.

Thank you for your time in replying to this inquiry.

Now, hopefully I will have heard from them one way or the other by April, but if not I have it put it writing that I will be withdrawing it. Then I will revise it again as I haven’t looked at it in over a year, and send it back out.

Somewhere with better stats.

So, one of the markets that I am waiting to hear back from is Dark Hart Press. I submitted a piece for their anthology Terrible Beauty, Fearful Symmetry back in November, and they had over 300 responses. The information link, once the submissions were closed the end of Dec., was set up to lead to the anthology’s MySpace page, I thought this was a little odd at first, but since then they have posted a couple of updates on their blog about the submissions they received, so I actually think that it is rather neat. Checked it out today, and there was a post dated the 26th:

Hi All,

In case you haven’t heard we had about 300 stories come in for this antho….if you have not heard back yet definitively with a yes or a no, you are probably on the maybe list (and in very good company with about 100 others) I’ll be re-reading.

I will be out of town from tomorrow till Feb 3rd, so expect a response following the fourth and I apologize, but it will take me a week or two to get through all the maybes…

Sorry for the delay.

So since I haven’t gotten a rejection letter yet, that means I have been in the third she is still looking at, not the two-thirds that she has rejected. Which is a good thing, and there is still a chance. (Yes, as writers we look for every possible indication that we are this much closer to having a piece accepted.) Plus, I might hear this coming week, which would be awesome. Hopefully.

I was perusing the guidelines for Strange Horizons,an online speculative fiction magazine, and found they have two great lists of plot lines they see too often. As they say:

This is not a canonical list of bad stories or story cliches. This is a list of types of stories that we at SH have seen too often; it’s not intended to be a complete list of all types of bad stories, nor are all the items on the list necessarily bad.

I admit I read through this list a wee bit apprehensively, wondering if anything I wrote landed smack dab in the middle of one of these plots. Luckily, they did not but they are a great read and I agree with just about every single one of them. I’m not going to repost the whole lists here, but I’ll post some of the best and then you can go read the rest.

Stories We’ve Seen Too Often (non-horror)

• 1.) Person is (metaphorically) at point A, wants to be at point B. Looks at point B, says “I want to be at point B.” Walks to point B, encountering no meaningful obstacles or difficulties. The end. (A.k.a. the linear plot.) (you mean life doesn’t work like that?)
• 2.) Creative person is having trouble creating.
  • Writer has writer’s block.(Stephen King’s The Dark Half is the only story I can think of where this actually was memorable – obviously I’ve forgotten the rest of them!)
  • Painter can’t seem to paint anything good.
  • Sculptor can’t seem to sculpt anything good.
  • Creative person’s work is reviled by critics who don’t understand how brilliant it is.
  • Creative person meets a muse (either one of the nine classical Muses or a more individual muse) and interacts with them, usually by keeping them captive.
• 3.) Visitor to alien planet ignores information about local rules, inadvertantly violates them, is punished.
  • New diplomat arrives on alien planet, ignores anthropologist’s attempts to explain local rules, is punished. (Bush goes to Iraq for example. Except he hasn’t been punished yet.)
• 4.) Weird things happen, but it turns out they’re not real.
  • In the end, it turns out it was all a dream.
  • In the end, it turns out it was all in virtual reality.
  • In the end, it turns out the protagonist is insane.
  • In the end, it turns out the protagonist is writing a novel and the events we’ve seen are part of the novel. (Now this would be a desperate writer.)
• 5.) An A.I. gets loose on the Net despite the computer it was on not being connected to the Net.
  • An A.I. gets loose on the Net but the author doesn’t have a clear concept of what it means for software to be “loose on the Net.” (Hint: the Net is currently a collection of individual computers, not some kind of big ubercomputer; software doesn’t currently run in the wires between computers.) (Word)
• 11.) Scientist uses himself or herself as test subject. (and turns into Dick Cheney)
• 12.) Evil unethical doctor performs medical experiments on unsuspecting patient. (and turns them into Dick Cheney)
• 15.) White protagonist is given wise and mystical advice by Holy Simple Native Folk. (arrgh)
• 28.) The narrator and/or male characters in the story are bewildered about women, believing them to conform to any of the standard stereotypes about women: that they’re mysterious, wacky, confusing, unpredictable, changeable, temptresses, etc. (It must be said (from the point of a geek) that this is often the viewpoint of a geek)

Horror Stories We’ve Seen Too Often.

• 4.) Evil creature kills lots of people.
  • In the end the creature escapes to kill again. (How else would there be a sequel?)
  • The creature is disguised as something cute. (Fluffy Bunnies!)
• 6.) Warnings are ignored, with unfortunate consequences.
  • Person is warned to Always Do something; fails to do it; thereby sets Nameless Evil free. (Gremlins Gremlins, bite after bite, what a tasty way to satisfy a gremlin Appetite!)
  • Person is warned to Never Do something; does it anyway; thereby sets Nameless Evil free. (See above…)
• 9,) Person is targeted by Evil Thing; in the end, Evil Thing kills person. (of course it does, what else would it do??)
• 11.) Initiate into religion discovers that the religion is actually killing/destroying its initiates. (Jazzercise?)
12.) Alien creature lays eggs under the skin of a human. (I knew that wasn’t a ordinary pimple!)

The lists are great fun, but at the same time they are a great resource, particularly for beginning writers, but a good refresher for those who aren’t so beginning.

And if you understand the Gremlins reference, you are probably over 30

What do you mean postally isn’t a real word? Oh, ok. Well, on the serious side, as more and more publications establish an online presence, and more and more accept electronic submissions, this method of submitting had become less of a novelty and more of a norm. Glimmer Train prefers electronic submissions, and The Kenyon Review accepts this method exclusively. And of course, almost every magazine now has a website, usually with their guidelines posted, and often with sample stories.

My preference? I much prefer to submit electronically. Of the all of the stories I submitted over the last year, three out of twenty-nine (Artful Dodge – who I am starting to despair of hearing from, Cemetery Dance and American Short Fiction) went postal (Ahhh! Stories running around with machine guns!) and all of the others, including Glimmer Train and The Kenyon Review went electronically. For one thing, it is much more convenient to submit electronically. I can do it at any time of day, or on a weekend, I don’t have to worry about it printing right, (although electronic submissions have to be formatted correctly – I’ll post on that another time), and I don’t have to pay postage. (Which does add up, as does paying for paper and ink.) Also, when a story is submitted, many markets email you to let you know that your submission was received, and some of the larger ones even let you keep track of your submissions online at their website. Responses are also somewhat quicker I think, as the editor can write the decision in an email and send it right out. And of course, there is less paper used, and fewer manuscripts to recycle or discard.

The only advantage that I can think of to postal submissions is the fact that it has a physical aspect to it. There is a certain satisfaction in the tactile sensation of holding a manuscript, and of putting it in the mail, and I admit to having a weakness for a paper rejection letter, (although not enough of a one to make me submit by mail!) The downsides to postal mail is that pretty much they don’t notify you when your manuscript was received, (which I notified by over half of my electronic submissions,) following up on long-time manuscripts is a little bit trickier, and of course the amount of paper that is wasted. And I’m not just talking about wasting paper from a financial point, but because of the environmental impact. I hate how much paper I go through as it is, even though I try to keep it to a minimum, and I have gotten to the point that a huge amount of my revision is done on the computer. I try to print on the backside of other pages I’ve printed, and for the most part I just print them out for final polishing, and any errors I missed on-screen. Adding up all of the manuscripts that are sent out and discarded equals a huge amount of paper. In the end though it comes down to what works better for each individual author. For me though, electronic submissions are the way to go.

isn’t really like chopping up and selling your babies. More like shoving them out of the nest, “Go, fly you damn things! It’s about time you decided to use those wings! Now go make Mama proud!”

Another story out of the nest, this time to a “Best of” anthology. Another one on my Duotrope tracker.