In my year-end review I mentioned a piece that I marked on Duotrope as an “assumed rejection.” Being the person I am, I don’t like loose ends, such as stories I don’t hear back on. Before this group I am about to talk about, I had only two long-time stories, and they were LONG - [...] Read more »

Before I go into my year-end statistics overview, a happy announcement. I had two stories go live last month,
“Tumbleweeds and Highways” was published in Clean Sheets.
“Web of Death” was published in MicroHorror.
I also finished the month on 100 Words which you can read at Val Gryphin’s December Batch.
Go check them out and if you have [...] Read more »

The Houston Literary Review has accepted my long poem, Eulogy for Life.
And in that time period between this and my last acceptance I have also received 1o rejections.
And I have 8 stories out to 15 markets.
AND! NaNoWriMo starts in about 48 hours! I’ll be blogging my progress heh heh heh. I am invoking the Zokutou [...] Read more »

So I spent yesterday smoothing out the site. The text should now be consistent overall, I changed the way the links highlight on mouse over, all my contact information is now in one spot - and look over there
<————– there is a page with links to my publishing credits I’m anal about going on [...] Read more »

So I’ve mentioned a couple of acceptances I’ve had this week, and the ones I have pending. Now, to put that into context a little bit, since May 1st, also I have submitted 15 stories that were rejected, and withdrawn 1 (Because it was accepted by Clean Sheets.)
So, since May 1st that is
39 submissions,
21 of [...] Read more »

One of the stories I submitted last year went to an online magazine, and let me tell you that was an up and down ride.
The first email I got was this:
We’re delighted to let you know that your story, “Short Story,” has just been accepted for its second step in our selection process. Each of [...] Read more »

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 [...] Read more »

This one I found interesting, partially because it reminds me of “American Idol.” Maybe they could call it, “American Author.”

“Thank you for your submission to Our Magazine. We’ve decided it doesn’t work for us, however. Following are some of the editorial comments for your consideration. I hope you will consider us again in the future.
EDITOR [...] Read more »

“Dear Val:
Many thanks for sending “Your Story” my way. I found your story to be well-written with good description and believable dialog. You did a nice job slowly revealing what was going on, and building sympathy for our killer.
The only qualm I had with the writing was the use of “began” in the [...] Read more »

But I love them. Well, maybe not love, but close. I feel like every rejection letter I get is a letter closer to an acceptance. I have a stack of them, I don’t throw them away, perhaps because I feel like having them is a physical symbol that I “am a Writer” as it were. [...] Read more »