Aeryn Rudel's Blog, page 8

Path to Publication: Hell to Pay – Installment Plans Available!

Time for another installment of Paths to Publication, wherein I recount a story’s arduous submission journey, complete with all the gory details and eventual publication triumph. This time, the story is “Hell to Pay – Installment Plans Available!”, which was recently published by Tales to Terrify. 

First, let me tell you a little about the story. Years ago, I took a temp job as a collection agent. It was, hands down, the worst job I’ve ever had. I lasted two weeks before turning in my notice. Th...

Query Quest: Baby’s First Query Rejection

Recently, I started querying agents with my supernatural thriller novel SECOND DAWN. Though I’ve published novels before, as well as a ton of short stories, the querying process is completely new to me. It does, however, fit neatly under the umbrella of rejectomancy, so I’ll be talking about the ups and downs of the process here like I do with short story submissions. Well, after sending a bunch of agent queries, I received my first inevitable rejection, and I’m gonna share that with you now.

No...

Baby’s First Query Rejection

Recently, I started querying agents with my supernatural thriller novel SECOND DAWN. Though I’ve published novels before, as well as a ton of short stories, the querying process is completely new to me. It does, however, fit neatly under the umbrella of rejectomancy, so I’ll be talking about the ups and downs of the process here like I do with short story submissions. Well, after sending a bunch of agent queries, I received my first inevitable rejection, and I’m gonna share that with you now.

No...

Yes! Yes! One Hundred Times Yes!

Yesterday, I celebrated a significant short story milestone. I received my 100th acceptance since I started tracking them through Duotrope. To further celebrate this momentous occasion,  I thought I might take a deep dive into the numbers on those one hundred acceptances and see what we can see. Let’s go!

Years Gone By

I recorded my first acceptance on May 1st, 2014. Acceptance number one hundred was recorded yesterday, June 27th, 2023. So, a little over nine years to hit triple digits, but let’...

Query Quest: A New Rejection Frontier

For the last eight years, I’ve been regaling you (inflicting on you?) tales of rejection woe. Up until now, all of these rejection have had a single source–short story submissions to various genre and literary magazines and anthologies. Friends, that changes today. Not more than a few hours ago, I sent the first query to agents for my novel SECOND DAWN and opened up a whole new world of potential rejections. I’m using QueryTracker to find and record my queries, so I’ll have plenty of data to sha...

The New Rejection Frontier

For the last eight years, I’ve been regaling you (inflicting on you?) tales of rejection woe. Up until now, all of these rejection have had a single source–short story submissions to various genre and literary magazines and anthologies. Friends, that changes today. Not more than a few hours ago, I sent the first query to agents for my novel SECOND DAWN and opened up a whole new world of potential rejections. I’m using QueryTracker to find and record my queries, so I’ll have plenty of data to sha...

Path To Publication: When Gods Walk

I recently had a story published with Radon Journal called “When Gods Walk”, and I thought it might be interesting to detail this story’s journey toward publication. It’s one of those pieces that’s been all over the place and, I think, it’s submission record illustrates the unpredictable nature of the publishing industry and one of the most important concepts for new authors to embrace: good stories get rejected, too.

Let’s start with the raw numbers. Below is a table featuring the date, market ...

Tracking the Yes: Submission Records Deep Dive

Recently, as I was looking at submissions at Duotrope, it struck me how some of my submission records for various markets paint an interesting picture of how submissions and publications tend to work. Primarily, these records show how important it is to match up the right story with the right editor/market. Not every story, no matter how good, is going to be a good fit for every publisher. I pulled my submission records for one of my favorite flash fiction markets, Factor Four Magazine, to illus...

Submission Protocol: Failure to Launch

There are a lot of valid reasons to withdraw a submission, and I’ve covered most of them on this blog. Generally, a submission is withdrawn because the publisher fails to respond in a timely manner or at all or, more commonly, the submission is accepted elsewhere in the process of a sim-sub. You can have a look at my thoughts on those withdrawal situations like those here and here. But, is there ever a time an author might consider pulling a story after it’s been accepted? Unfortunately, there i...

One Author, Three Styles

I’ve done a pretty exhaustive series of posts on my writing style and how it developed, but as I was working on a freelance piece recently, it occurred to me that I have three different styles I use on a regular basis. I thought it might be fun to take a look at those styles, give you some examples, and then see what kind of readability scores each one produces.

I’ll be using the Flesch-Kincaid readability scores to get a statistical idea of how the styles differ. As a refresher, Flesch-Kincaid ...