Eep. Some more rejections have come in. A 16-day higher form from Apex, a 60-day base form from West Branch, and a surprisingly long and detailed 47-day personalized rejection from a small Canadian press. I'm a bit put off by the publisher rejection, though. The majority of the criticism seems to be errors on their part, or they were not paying close attention (there was some useful feedback though). It's clear they read the entire first ten pages, but they made some strange observations. They said the location of the setting was not clear, which is spelled out explicitly on page 1. They pointed out an apparent continuity error which does not exist - they simply did not read or forgot about a sentence that appears in the next paragraph. There are about 6 or 7 such errors, which seems odd to me. They invited me to ask any questions if I wished to do so. Is this some kind of test? As I said, off-putting. I think I'll reply with underlined passages from the text to each erroneous statement. I'll behave as a proper diplomat of course Anyway. That makes it 69 for the year. Nice.
Do rats conga? The only ones I've seen around here are dead. Though I guess if they can still write they can probably still dance.
I have 32 active submissions out at the moment ranging from 5 to 550-ish days. I try not to get to excited or even encouraged by the length of time some of my older submissions have been out, but, man, I just really want one of these babies to pull through.
Another rejection letter for 5 poems, this one from Your Daily Poem. Second one. These were all I had that didn’t go against their already detailed list of things they don’t want (and I’ve had almost 60 poems accepted all around). Their submission guidelines say if you keep getting rejected by them, take them off your submission list. Letters: 14 Poems: 60
A one day form rejection from Smokelong Quarterly. Dang, they could at least take the holiday weekend off, lol. Oh well, that’s #10 for me. I’m lagging behind a lot of you, but I finally beat some pieces into submission-worthy shape and I’m sending them out. Onwards!
Rejection or no rejection I queried this one agent back in December, which resulted in a rejection. Fast forward to today: I queried a new agency with 2 agent and an intern (you cant query a specific agent but the agency as a whole). 1 of the agents was the agent from December. She'd switched agencies. she is also the only agent at the agency that takes SFF. so now I'm thinking i just set myself up for another rejection....
If they even remember. I can't tell you how many times I've rejected/interviewed a candidate only to trip over them down the road with no recollection of the first go-round.
6 day form rejection from Chestnut Review, #11. I guess everyone's reading submissions over the weekend. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Damn! That rocks. You're going to share your secrets, aren't you? Please don't tell me that it all comes down to actually being good..
Thanks, y'all. I'm still a little stunned. He told me that normally the next step was an editor but that he didn't see anything that needed to be edited. (That gave me a proud moment.) I need a new title, so I'm combing through the manuscript looking for something sufficiently alluring. My secret? Writing for sixty years and finally turning out a decent query letter, I guess. I'd been procrastinating about submitting a new batch of queries for months because I could NOT come up with a decent summary. It finally occurred to my dim brain that I could seek out more agents who didn't require summaries and avoid writing one of the damn things all together.
Two 43-day form rejections from Northern Gravy. I’d submitted for their fiction and kidlit categories. Both made the longlist, which is apparently the top 20%, but got no further.
