Aeryn Rudel's Blog, page 5

Back-Edits & Brain Weasels: A Brief Look at My Writing Process

Recently, someone was asking me about my writing process. More specifically, they asked me what my draft to done process looks like. Well, I just finished a 5,000-word freelance piece, and I think it’s a good example of what my meandering path to a done(ish) story looks like. This story took me roughly five working days to write (not counting outlining). Now, “days” in this example are not necessarily contiguous and they more represent blocks of working time I fit around other projects than comp...

800 Submissions: An Analysis

Recently, I sent out my 800th submission since I started tracking them through Duotrope way back in April of 2012. Feels weird to even say that, but, I guess 12 years of steady submissions adds up. As usual, when I hit a major milestone like this, I like to break down the numbers and bombard you poor people with a bunch of stats. So here we go!

First, the basic numbers.

Rejections: 642Acceptances: 104Withdrawals: 26Lost/Never Responded: 22Pending: 6

I won’t lie; I did track some of my last...

The Monsters the Guidelines Forgot: Vampires

Continuing my series of post about how to sell stories featuring monsters who frequent publisher do-not-send list, we’re gonna talk about the only monster that might give zombies a run for their money as most maligned. Yep, it’s time sharpen our fangs and talk about everyone favorite undead parasites: vampires. As with zombies, I’ve had a bit of success selling vampire stories, and to date, I’ve managed to convince seven editors to give my vampire tales a shot. Let’s discuss some of the way I di...

Rejectomancy Rabbit Hole: Acceptance Rates

Recently, I was discussing the chances of getting published at some of the big genre markets with my author pals, and a few numbers were thrown around, some by yours truly. These numbers were mostly guess-work. None of us really know the exact percentage chance we’ll make it out of the slush pile and onto the editor’s desk, to say nothing of our chances of actually getting published. Then I remembered a few markets had actually told me how close I’d gotten to publication in their rejections, rel...

The Monsters the Guidelines Forgot: Zombies

In this series of posts, I’m going to talk about writing and selling stories featuring classic monsters. You know, the ones you often find in publisher guidelines after the words “absolutely no”. It’s usually the big three—vampires, werewolves, and zombies—that make the do not send list, but other well-worn beasties show up as well. I’m not here to tell you not to write about these classic critters. On the contrary, I’ve had success selling stories featuring the big three, and I thought I’d shar...

Query Quest: Postmortem

Last month, I marked the last outstanding query for my novel SECOND DAWN as closed, no response (CNR), ending my first trek through the deep, dark jungle of query land. It was a rough trip, but I learned a lot, and I will absolutely put those lessons into practice when I start querying my second novel in the next month or so. In this post, I’ll give you a quick recap of my querying stats and then talk about some of the things I learned.

As always, this entire post comes with the disclaimer that ...

The Writer’s Block Post or How I Yeet the Yips

I’ve been running this writing blog for the better part of a decade, and not once have I really covered writer’s block. Quite the oversight; I know. Do you even write, bro? In this post, I will talk about the aforementioned writer’s worst nightmare, but only my personal experience with it. You see, I think writer’s block is kind of a catchall terms for a wide array of conditions that goes beyond the simple “I can’t write.” It’s manifestations are as varied as the authors it plagues. So what you’...

2023: A Writing Rearview Review

Well, 2023 is in the books, and as writing years go, it wasn’t all I hoped it would be. Though not a complete failure by any means, 2023 was nowhere near as productive as years past. This is largely due to a focus on querying my novel SECOND DAWN, which ate into both writing and submission time far more than I expected. Still, there were some bright spots to 2023, primarily what I learned and can take into 2024 to make it a more productive year. Below, I’ll cover the broad strokes of the major a...

Leaving the Nest: Where To Send My New Story

I recently finished a new story, and it’s time to send my poor little word baby out into the dark, feral wastes of submission land. In this post, I thought it might be fun to talk about how I go about deciding which markets to target first with a new story. This process is rife with rejectomancy, so it’s perfect for the blog. Let’s discuss.

The Story

My new piece, which we’ll refer to as “Baby Bird” for this post is a sci-fi cyberpunk-ish crime thriller and clocks in at just under 6,000 words. ...

Query/Submission Statement: November 2023

I was fairly active in November, but, overall, it was a disappointing month for both short story submissions and agent queries. It was a month of cleansing, and I cleared out a lot of stale agent queries with the goal of heading into 2024 with a clean slate. Anyway, let’s have a look at the numbers.

November 2023 Short Story SubmissionsSubmissions Sent: 5Rejections: 3No Response: 0Acceptances: 0Further Consideration/Shortlist: 0Withdrawals: 0

Another five submissions in November, though ...