My Pleasant Trip To Loserville

Well, I guess I had an off night. My story did not win the contest. On the plus side I got a very nice rejection letter, I know you’re asking yourself how can rejection be nice, and my answer is that you need to submit more stories cause eventually you’ll find a real stinker of an editor who tears you a new one for no apparent reason. My worst has been “Writing isn’t for everyone, maybe you should find a different hobby…”

This one talked about how great the story and the writing were, and told me again how I had made it into the final four. Then it went on to tell me that the content of the story might alienate a small portion of their expected readers. They wanted to be “pagan-positive” and my story had an evil witch in it. This was a unique reason for a rejection and I have nothing but nice things to say about the market.

On a completely different note here is a link to Patrick Rothfuss’ blog. It is a post about mother’s day and his mother who has passed away. The post really hit home with me and I thought I would share it. I lost my thirty years ago and my dad about eleven years ago. I didn’t realize so many people dreamed about their lost loved ones until I started to read the comments. LINKY LINK

Rejection and Work

Rejection.

It is something that all writers have to deal with. Over the past couple of years I think I have gotten a pretty thick skin about it. I think writing short fiction had helped me with it. Personal taste is a big part of what gets rejected and what gets accepted. I have had stories rejected by smaller markets that ended up published in larger markets.

But yesterday I set a new personal record for rejection. I had five in one day. Three of them were very nice personal rejections, that pointed out specifics, one apologized for taking so long but said there were three stories they were deciding between and they only had room for one. But it was still a little discouraging. All in all I think I took it pretty well, I sat down and pounded out 3000+ words in Blood Plague War.

I think that is the key to handling rejection, at least for me. Last night I decided that I was going to write a NY Times bestseller (yeah right) and make them wish they published me back when I was a nobody. But I am going to use this as an awkward segway into an article on work...

I also wanted to share THIS ARTICLE by By Rachel Farrell, posted on MSN CareerBuilder.

It is called four jobs everyone should have to teach them about work “ethic and life” I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had done all of them before I graduated college. And I really had to agree with the article’s assessment.

The jobs are:

1. Server to learn empathy
2. Retail Clerk to learn patience and respect
3. Customer Service(specifically a call center) to teach you kindness and make you think about the way you treat people.
4. Manual Labor to teach you work a good work ethic.

I worked as both a bartender and a waiter so I can scratch number one off. I worked at a convenience store so there is number two, though I should mention that working the graveyard shift for three months before moving to days gave me a much different outlook than my coworkers. I worked as a telemarketer for a very brief time(about a month) and I am currently a librarian so I can cross number three off. And finally my summer job my junior year of high school was roofing houses.

The jobs did teach me a couple of things not mentioned in the article. First, working graveyard shift and as a bartender I was around a lot of very drunk people. After convincing a shit faced linebacker from the college football team that he could not buy bear at five in the morning, I can say that I have never been flustered by any upset customers at any other job. No matter how upset someone is about their fines at the library they just don’t hold a candle to the six foot five inch, two hundred and fifty pound plus drunken monster. And I can happily say that my summer of manual labor is what made me want to go to college, I wanted a job where I could sit on my butt at least ½ the time, which is one of the many reasons a career as a writer is so enticing. I mean I would get to sit on my butt 100% of the time, who can beat that?

An acceptance and a rejection

I got one acceptance and a rewrite request for short stories today. Cold Shadows, a short story written as a prequel to one of my unpublished novels, The Laws of Summer, will be published in the May edition of Sorceress Signals.

Of course all the joy of acceptance was ruined by get a rejection for The Laws of Summer in my inbox at the same time. It seems like whenever I get an acceptance I always get a rejection the same day, maybe it’s a law of physics or something.

Anyway Guess its time to send it somewhere else. Angry Robot Books is opening to unsolicited subs for the month of March. So I am planning on editing the novel for a few weeks and then sending it off to them.

Work has been a little crazy, so I’ve been pretty tired at night, not getting a whole lot of writing done. The server went down at work so we have had to go old school. When anybody checks out a book we have to write it down. We can’t make new library cards and we have a huge stack of books to check-in when we get our server going again.

An Acceptance and Other Writing News

My short story, Blood of Warriors, Blood of Kings, just got accept to Iron Bound Ezine. I'll post a link when it is live. The story is a short fantasy piece that I wrote for one of our shootout competitions. So I got quite a bit of feedback on it, every author in the shoot out made comments. About half of them really liked and about half of them really didn’t. I got comments like- this was great, reminds me of Robert Howard, and I love sword and sorcery this was awesome. I also got- this reminds me of a bad fantasy movie. So if you like sword and sorcery you’ll probably like if you don’t, you probably won’t.

I made it to 5000 words in my new novel, The Blood Plague, and I am hoping to get another couple thousand words done before I go to bed. The novel is set in a fantasy world that is torn apart by a devastating plague. So it’s kind of an apocalyptic fantasy novel, and so far it has been really fun to write.

Finally, I received two more rejections for my novel, The Laws of Summer. One was a personal rejection. All the editors who read it say the same thing "We enjoyed your novel", "We like your writing style", etc. And then the big but comes, "But in the current economy, sword and sorcery fantasy is very hard to market” Sometimes they call it heroic fantasy, sometimes they just say fantasy, or sometimes they say novels in this genre, but they all mean the same thing.

I thought this might be some kind of industry standard rejection but many of the letters go on to talk about specific ways to improve the novel. Which I don't understand at all if it isn't marketable, but my rant about that is a little off topic so I will refrain from going on about it.

My conclusion?

The fantasy stories I like to write apparently aren't what publishers want. This leaves me with a couple of problems.

First, the novels I write are the kind that I like to read. Therefore, the novels I like to read are not "marketable" this must be why I am having so much trouble finding anything that looks interesting, from a new author, at the book store. My “books to read” shelf is growing smaller and smaller.

Second, main stream publishers have absolutely no interest in my novel. I have a few mid list publishers that I want to try, after that I am not sure what to do with the novel. I am not sure I want to send it to a small press. Not because I dislike small presses in any way or have anything bad to say about them. I have read a lot of good stuff from small presses in the last couple of years.

It is because Jessy and I own a small press, and it seems silly to send it to another small press to make 15% royalties when we could do it ourselves and make 100%. On the other hand we did not start Pill Hill to publish our own work. Not that there would be anything wrong with an owner of a small press publishing their own stuff. I already have a few short stories in some Pill Hill anthos (mostly because people didn't return contracts and we wanted to have a specific number of stories).

But if we publish my novel I am always going to wonder if it was good enough to publish. Yeah, I am one of those writers, the kind that thinks everything I write is crap until someone tells me different, then I assume that they also think it is crap but are trying to be nice.

Anyway, maybe I can find a small press that is well respected or one that pays advances. I’ll have to do a little research. If I send it to a small press I want to be sure they can bring something to the table that Pill Hill cannot. Hmmm…Or maybe I can spend half the night blogging in circles because I don’t really have a point and I am not sure what I want to do.

I am going to stop now and write a chapter in Blood Plague. Writing is so much easier than getting published.

Done stalking

In my last post I said I was stalking Duotrope's, watching one market like and eagle. Well, I heard back from them, it was a rejection but it kind of made me more excited than some of my acceptances.

It was a professional paying market that usually sends form rejections but I got a personal rejection. The rejection said the editor liked my story and gave few very specific helpful hints, and said that story had some problems with pacing. It also went on to state that I came very close to being accepted and the editor asked that I please consider sending them a story in the future.

It was actually kind of cool.

A Few Updates

The Pill Hill Press shoot-out is over, I ended up with a score of 29.57 which put me in second place to William Wood who had a score of 29.94. I was very excited to come in second place with such a great group of writers.

It was a confidence boost I needed, I have gotten seven short story rejections in the past week. ~sigh~

But I started using the pyramid form of sending stories out. It is where you send your stories to the highest paying markets first and then send them in to smaller markets afterward. It sounds like common sense, but before I was just sending my stories to what ever publication caught my eye rather than worry about payment.

I decided that I really want to be a member of SFWA, it is my new goal with short fiction. I really didn't expect a pro paying market to nab up one of my stories, but it would have been nice.

As I wait for the next inevitable round of rejections I started working on Godswar again. I figured out where I went wrong, and had to cut nearly 20,000 words to get back to the point where I took the wrong path, but I am writing steadily again and have gotten almost 8,000 words written in the last two weeks, a far cry from the 2,000 words I got done in the entire month of June and July.

I know where the novel is going and I have clear path set in my mind. The words are just flowing, I love that feeling.

I think the problem that I could only write once a week, and I wasn't going back to review what I had already done. So I would just read the chapter before and say "hmmm, looks like its a chase scene, and then start writing. Well, that one chase scene lasted for the entire 20,000 words I cut. It was very...um...exciting...yeah thats what I'll call it.

I started writing brief synopsis of my novel as I go. After I finish each chapter I write the synopsis of the chapter. Should make it easier when its time to edit anyway, and then if I take a break from the novel I can know what is going on.

Sword & Sorceress

So I am done with most of the prep work for the Summer Reading Program. The program starts next week, so while I will be super busy when I am at work my nights and weekends will be my own again.

The first thing I did with my free time was write a story for the Sword and Sorceress anthology. I wrote a 5000 word story that is actually a shore prequel to one of my unpublished novels. I did not expect to get published, it is a pro paying antho, but I heard that they give personal rejections and I hoped to get some tips to make the story better.

My personal rejection said that there was nothing wrong with the story it just did not have the feeling she was looking for, and that I should send it to other markets.

I found this somewhat heartening. At least she didn't hate it, and didn't have any major problems with the story. I have already subbed it to another market, and have my fingers crossed. I am going to start at the top, as far as pay scale goes, and work my way down.

I am also going to have a short 500 word zombie story in Daily Bites of Flesh. The story entitled Divorce of the Dead is almost all action.

Still Writing

So I had some good news, a short story of mine, Higher Learning, was accepted for publication in the Absent Willow Review. It was one of my few forays into sci-fi and I am happy to find a home for it.

Then I had some bad news, my novel, Summer's Blood, was rejected by PYR. I sent it to them first for multiple reasons. In order of importance least to most.

1. They take email submissions which saves some ink and paper

2. They request the entire manuscript, so I didn't have to write a synopsis, I am horrible at those.

3. They have an average response time on Duotropes of 14 days, and that is excatly how long it took me to get a response.

4. I really love thier cover artists, some of the best in the business.

5. The have a repuation for putting out high quality novels.

But it was not to be. Now I need to give a few days and do another edit, while at the same time writing a synopsis of each chapter. Then I will send it off to another publisher. I am going to start with the big New York publishers and work my way down. Getting a rejection on a short story doesn't bother me, I've had plenty and plenty of acceptances. But when one of my novels is rejected it is depressing, I spend so much time and effort on them that it is hard to hear someone else doesn't like them. But I always think that maybe if I give them one more edit they will be good enough.