Bad Idea

I just clicked the link provided by a certain anthology to check the status of one's submission and discovered my story is number 973 in the queue. Given that the deadline has passed and they've already been reading for a while, and that most places will be going to commissioned writers, well, wow, I'm not sure even my dreamiest optimism can sustain the hope of a sale there. I should have let it be and simply wandered about in blissful ignorance thinking that maybe, just maybe I'd come home one night to an email...

No matter. It's June! That means that the Aliens:Recent Encounters anthology will be out in 2 weeks (hurrah!), and that the Bram Stoker Awards will soon be announced (go, Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations, go!). Who knows what other good things might happen? Well, not another ASIM sale, not this month anyway - I just got a bounceback there.

Anyway, onwards and upwards.

973. Wow.

I'm Baaaaaaack.

Okay, I probably could have posted this yesterday, but it still felt a bit tenuous then. However, after a bit of correspondence today, I now feel confident enough to announce that my SF pony story will appear in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine later this year.

So I finally did it! After countless (well, if you want the exact number...) hold requests for stories that then weren't picked up (as I've often lamented in posts), four and a bit years after my debut amongst its pages, I'll be making an encore appearance in ASIM.

Yay!

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!

A short story a day...

I finished Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine Issue 44 this morning. My favourite story is the one I read Tuesday - Factory Made by Ralph Benedetto. It has a nice Golden Age of SF feel about it, and was fun to read.