The Andromeda Strain

My thalassophobia story was rejected by Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine this morning – it made its way to the final round of their selection process, was put in their story pool and held for a few months, but wasn’t chosen by any of their editors, so they released it back to me with the dreaded Unfortunately, while we liked your submission, so far we have not found a place for it ... and it is against our policy to hold onto a story indefinitely.. letter.
I’m beginning to think I’ll never get another story into ASIM. Since they published The Six Solvers and the Mystery of the Sad Boy way back in 2009 (now there's a piece that had a long gestation), I’ve had quite a few stories make it into the final round, but none of them have been the right story at the right time to catch the right, left or third eye of any of their rotating roster of editors.

I will keep trying though, of course, and not just because I’m a glutton for punishment. The great thing about ASIM is that they send their readers’ reports with the rejections/releases, and over the years, I’ve found these to be enormously useful. One story of mine, a personal favourite that hasn’t been accepted anywhere yet, is still doing the rounds solely because of very positive, and positively flattering responses from two out of three of their readers (can't please everyone). With my thalassophobia story, one of the readers went to a great deal of trouble to write a few comments about what worked and didn’t work for him/her. I had a little think about these whilst walking to the train, agreed with a couple of them, and spent the trip down to Melbourne shoving sentences around and tweaking a few facts to make certain pieces of relevant information clearer. The story is now better than it was before. I’ll let it sit a few days and submit it again to some lucky publication on Sunday.

Anyway, the point I'm making is that although it's always a pain to have another story rejected/released by ASIM, I've always appreciated their feedback. And one day, as God is my witness, they will accept another of my tales!