Aeryn Rudel's Blog, page 50

One-Hour Flash – For Abby

Time for another installment of One-Hour Flash and another opportunity to exorcise a demon from my hard drive. All these stories were written in one hour for a writing exercise/contest, and for one (good) reason or another, I haven’t done much with them. So instead of letting them pile up rejections like the the good lord intended, I’m sharing them here. Like all the stories in this series, this is more or less what I ended up with after an hour of writing.

This one is called “For Abby,” and...

Bring the Pain: The March to 100 Rejections

Today I’m excited to present a guest post from my writer pal Sarah Beaudette, who has recently completed a harrowing yearlong journey to 100 rejections. You might ask why someone would aim to compile 100 rejections in a single year, and I’ll let Sarah answer that in a moment. I’ll just say that such an endeavor is absolutely legit and takes both perseverance and real dedication to the craft. I mean, hell, I run a blog called Rejectomancy, and I didn’t even come close to 100 rejections this ye...

A Better No: The Higher-Tier Form Rejection

I’ve covered higher-tier form rejections on my blog a few times, but it’s a subject I see in writing circles a fair amount, so I thought I’d dip back into my generous supply of rejection letters and show off some recent examples. Let’s look at a couple common form rejections and higher-tier form rejections from the same markets and see if we can spot the differences.

Publisher #1

Common Form Rejection:

We have read your submission and will have to pass, as it unfortunately does not meet our n...

2017: A Writing Rearview Review

Another year come and gone, and it’s time to wrap up my writing endeavors for 2017. I set some writing goals at the end of last year, and as these things usually go, I accomplished some and fell short with others. Still, 2017 was mostly positive yardage, but I’ll get to that at the end of the post.

And now . . . STATS!

Fantasy/Horror/Sci-Fi Submissions

Total Submissions Sent: 75

I really improved my overall submission output this year, beating last year’s number by 21 submissions. I’m pleased...

Submission Guidelines: Check ’em Twice

If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, you’ve no doubt heard me go on and on about the process of submitting a story. Well, most of that has to do with one very important factor: following the submission guidelines. I’ve written a bunch of posts on the subject, but I thought I’d put all that basic info together as a checklist. This is essentially the checklist I use when considering if my story will be a good fit for a particular publisher.

Here’s the list:

General Info Story Len...

Submission Statement: December 2017

December was another good month for submissions. I didn’t think I’d match November’s output, but I did, and I had more than just rejections to tally in the final month of the year.

December 2017 Report Card

Submissions Sent: 13 Rejections: 8 Other: 0 Acceptances: 1 Publications: 2

I sent a lot of submissions in December because I finished three new stories, which are currently running the submission gamut. Like I said last month, 13 is a lot of submissions and that pace might be difficult t...

Hook, Line & Sinker: Fine-Tuning the First Sentence

Last year, I wrote a blog post inspired by one of my favorite essays by Stephen King, “Great Hookers I Have Known,” from his collection Secret Windows. The title of the essay is, of course, not what it sounds like. It’s about crafting a first sentence for a novel (or short story) that grabs the reader, the “hooker,” as it was apparently called by publishers back in the day.

In the blog post from last year, I looked at the “hookers” in six of my published stories and tried to ascertain if a go...

One-Hour Flash – The Christmas Crypt

Hey, all, it’s time for another installment of one-hour flash. If you’re new to this feature or this blog, these are stories I wrote as part of a one-hour flash fiction exercise/contest. Some of those stories were good enough to be published, and the others, well, they ended up here.

Two New Publications & Two New Markets

The first part of this month has been pretty damn decent. I’ve received one acceptance and I’ve published two pieces, both of which you can read for free online. I’m gonna talk about the publications first, and then I’ll give you some information that might actually be useful.

Acceptance Rates: What are the Chances?

We all know that top-tier short story markets receive tons of submissions, likely hundreds every submission period, but how many of those submissions are actually accepted? Excellent question, and we have some data that can at least get us in the ballpark.

Since I’m primarily a horror writer, I’m going to give you stats on five markets (three pro and two semi-pro) that accept horror: Apex Magazine, Black Static, The Dark Magazine, Pseudopod, and Red Room Magazine. I’ve listed the acceptance r...