Chantal Boudreau's Blog, page 18

April Submission Blitz – Happy Easter

I sent off a shorter story today, a longer flash fiction “real-life horror” piece to a newer venue offering semi-pro rates. We’ll see how that fares. I did more work on my fairy-tale mash-up and I’m still waiting on that third rejection from Simon 451. I submitted “Sifting the Ashes” later than the other two but it should be coming soon. I’m much more interested in receiving the responses for the three other novels I submitted elsewhere. I feel I have better chances at a “yes” with those three, even though a “no” is more likely.

Other than that, I just hung out with the kids today enjoying a ham dinner and Easter candy – the hubby had a weekend outing but at least he’ll be back for my next two days off. I hope the rest of you are enjoying time off with family and friends. Let’s hope the spring is here to stay and I can get started on my gardening soon.

April Submission Blitz – Misfortune

The only thing worse than a nasty rejection is an immediate response to an e-mail telling me a venue is no longer open to submissions when all other evidence says otherwise. When that happens, I feel as though I’ve put in all the effort of preparing the submission only to have completely wasted my time. I’d rather put up with having a snowball’s chance in hell, and failing, then no hope at all.

But I do count this as one of my submissions towards my goal because I did jump through the submission hoops that would have been required if they had actually been open (they should update their website – their response e-mail states they closed to new submissions on March 7) and I did actually submit the story, I just got a “sorry, we’re closed” e-mail back automatically. I’ve actually gotten rejection letters back almost as fast from venues that were open, so I figure this isn’t that different. I put in the work, after all.

I’m starting to scrape the bottom of what I have available to submit. I’ll be retracting a few year old submissions soon to make up the difference. Only 11 more days to go.

April Submission Blitz – Going for the Win

I mentioned before that I won’t participate in writing competitions with entrance fees, but I do sometimes have a go at ones that you can enter for free. I sent one of my stories off to a writing contest today and I have one entered in last quarter as well. I don’t think I have much of a chance, but as with the pro-rate venues, I’m still going to try. They say one of the things that factors into success in writing is luck along with things like hard work and talent. I think there’s far more to winning one of these contests than just luck, but it does play into it.

I also chose to enter stories in to these last couple of quarters that are a far cry from what I usually write – we’ll see if that makes any difference.

April Submission Blitz – Mash-up Maybe?

Part of me is not a big fan of mash-ups, but I’m honestly a sucker for ones involving fairy-tales. I sharpened my horror teeth on fairy-tale mash-ups from Tanith Lee. I’m currently working on my third fairy-tale mash-up, this one based on Rapunzel but with a deviant spin. I have a Cinderella/zombie mash-up that is scheduled to be released as part of a horror anthology this summer. And lastly, I wrote up a Lovecraftian version of The Little Mermaid that I’m sending out as today’s submission. I wrote it for a pro-rate anthology that rejected it and submitted it to a token payment ocean horror anthology that gave it a maybe but then turned it down. This current semi-pro call is specifically for Lovecraftian fairy-tale mash-ups, so its timing concurrent with this blitz is a happy occurrence. We’ll see if they go for it.

In part it depends if they are looking for a Cthulu-esque writing style or just Lovecraftian elements. When I write a fairy-tale mash-up, the storyteller in me leans heavily towards a storybook stylization with a chilling edge, rather than the other way around. I think the pro-rate venue I wrote it for was looking for a story with a stronger Lovecraftian flavour and not just a something that worked Dagon and his ilk into the story. Not that my story wasn’t appropriately gruesome – that much it is. It just reads more like a fairy-tale. I have read far more fairy-tales in my time, toes and tomes of them …many of them spectacularly gruesome, than I have stories by H. P. Lovecraft, so for me they yield greater influence. I’m sure it’s different for writers that took an interest in classic horror at an earlier age.

I’m still waiting on that third Simon 451 rejection and I have another submission already in mind for tomorrow. We’ll see what happens them.

April Submission Blitz – It Doesn’t Make Sense

I was looking into possible pro-rate venues (I found one for “Battling the Shikome”) when I noticed that despite the fact that the greater part of publishers now accept some form of electronic submissions (e-mail, Submittable, custom submission forms, etc.) there are a few pro-rate venues that still only accept print.

I’m not surprised when it comes to publishers of literary fiction. They are prone to holding to old ways and when they’ve been in the business for decades, sometimes it’s difficult to embrace new business processes. When it comes to genre fiction though, especially a venue specializing in science fiction, I expect something more. Their fiction is premised on what is to come, on new technologies and possibilities, on observing the universe with an open-mind. So when they reject current technologies being used to facilitate processes in their industry, technologies that will help increase access on an international level, I consider that a strange contradiction and a little backwards.

I don’t write much science fiction so I’m not likely to submit to SF exclusive venues anyway, but some offer multiple speculative fiction genres and I find it frustrating and disappointing to run into “print submission only” calls for submission. Sending anything via the mail is ridiculously expensive in Canada (we just got hit with a 33% increase in the cost of domestic postage) and entirely unnecessary in this day and age. If I have to send it outside of Canada, then there’s the additional problem of coming up with foreign postage for the SASE envelope they always require.

I’ve made a few exceptions for a couple of “print submissions only” venues here in Canada, and I did struggle with the task of sending a handful of print submissions to the US more than a decade ago, when electronic submissions were rare, but it is no longer worth the cost and tremendous inconvenience. I have many other options.

So I guess when it comes to certain venues, I’m out of luck. Maybe that will change someday when they decide to get with the times.

It would only make sense.

April Submission Blitz – Double Ding

So “Gaia’s Gift” is back out in the big bad world today, likely to come back as it is vying for a lone slot this time, and I started work on an adult variant of a fairy tale for another submission. Today also marked a double ding – two novel rejections within eleven minutes of one another. I wasn’t really holding my breath for an acceptance from this new offshoot from one of the big five, so there wasn’t much in the way of disappointment, but it was worth a shot. I’m still waiting on the third rejection, which I expect to come soon. It went into a different slush pile though, because it was in a different category, so I may not see it for another couple of days.

This marks the halfway point in my submission blitz and I don’t see any problem with reaching my “30 submissions in 30 days” goal. I haven’t even started retracting year old submissions to resubmit yet. I might be doing that towards the end of the month, but with the rejections coming in so far, I won’t be struggling with last minute flash fiction this blitz.

Back to more writing.

April Submission Blitz – Disconnect

Today’s a hard day for me. It has been exactly one year since I lost one of my best friends and real-life muse, Barb, to cancer. Without her the world is a bleaker, lonelier place. She was one of my few positive ties to the world at large and one of the people who made me feel like the fact that I’m different from the norm is more of a good thing than a bad one. On days like this I really get a sense of that disconnect and I’m less inclined to want to share with others. When I’m in that state of mind, the rejections hurt more, like the one I got today.

Yes – I know, I’m supposed to have a thick skin. But just because I know this doesn’t always make it so, especially when I’m raw for other reasons.

“Gaia’s Gift” is a bit of a mystery to me. It’s one of those stories I liked enough to base a novel on its post –apocalyptic ideas (Sifting the Ashes – unpublished) and I received overwhelmingly positive feedback from my test-readers, but response from submission editors has been lukewarm at best. I’ll often see my favourites, stories well-liked by those who read them before I began to submit them, rejected far more often than the ones I’m not as fond of and which get a so-so response from test readers. This may be because I’m more inclined to submit the ones I prefer to pro-rate venues, who always say no, but “Gaia’s Gift” got a no from a semi-pro venue and a charity anthology too. I’m starting to wonder if it’s destined to remain on the shelf.

Today’s feedback for “Gaia’s Gift” is that the submission editor did not find it compelling. I can’t fix that. I wrote it with a lot of heart and I thought the story was touching. Others who have read it have agreed with me on this, but there’s no guaranteeing that what appeals to you or your friends will have the same effect on anyone else.

I’ve also gotten the feedback that there’s too much background to the story. It’s hard not to set the stage for a post-apocalyptic dystopian tale without presenting background. The story wouldn’t make much sense without it. You need to know what has caused the damage and despair before you can move the characters towards new hope and find that glimmer in the gloom. At least, that’s how I see it, but maybe other people prefer to be left in the dark.

Then again, this is one of the things I’ve always wrestled with with short stories – why I used to think I couldn’t write them at all. Despite the fact that short stories pinpoint one event, when I start writing the characters become real people with extensive histories in my head. I can see all of the happenings that led up to the primary plot of the tale and can anticipate some of the consequences to follow that would never be addressed in the story. That means I often get test-readers saying “there’s so much to this – you should write a novel based on this.” I’ve written more than eighty short stories to date…that would be an awful lot of novels in four years.

I would only write novels if it were easier to get them published, but it’s not. I envy well-established writers like Robert J. Sawyer who have discarded short story writing because their novel writing is more lucrative. Not so for me. Of course, it’s not really about the money for me. If so I’d spend all my time writing erotica. It pays really well. The hubby suggested it’s because there aren’t as many people out there who can write it well, who are willing to write it at all. Maybe, but I prefer writing the tamer stuff and since writing isn’t my day job I’m going to concentrate on writing what I love…

…Like “Gaia’s Gift.” And I’ll draw consolation in the fact that Barb found it compelling.

April Submission Blitz – Improving my Chances

Today’s submission, a flash fiction piece, was to Crossed Genres, a pro-rate venue that has a policy in support of new writers. They specifically reserve one slot in every issue for writers who have never had a pro-rate sale – their “new author spotlight.” This definitely improves my chances of finally securing this elusive opportunity. I’m making a point to submit as often as possible to this venue and Penumbra, who also tries to support new authors when possible. I’ve managed to make it to the final round of selections with both venues, which suggests I may have what it takes to eventually get an acceptance from one or both of them.

Not that I think getting a pro-rate sale will make things any easier. I’ll still have to work just as hard. What it will do is give me a little more confidence and maybe change the way some people in the industry look at me. There are those out there who will shrug you off if you’ve never had a pro-rate sale. It would be nice to have more people take me seriously as a writer and improve my chances of being read.

I have another flash fiction submission in the works for tomorrow and I’m eying three more opportunities for pro-rate submissions later this month. At this rate, I’m hoping to have about a 50% pro-rate submission rate for the month. Hopefully, this will up my chances.

More tomorrow J

April Submission Blitz – Next!

I finished and polished my latest short and I have now sent it off to the pro-rate venue that struck my fancy. It’s a nasty little horror story that fits their theme, so they ought to give it a chance. I really like the playful approach to their guidelines which gives me some hope they’ll at least find my submission entertaining. The hubby has gotten used to my futile attempts at getting a pro-rate sale and joked about me sending it off so they can reject it. It feels that way to me too, but that won’t stop me.

Now that “Burn” is done and out the door, I need to figure out what new pro-rate venue to write for next. Even if my chances are slim, I still get the pleasure of writing the story and the opportunity to resubmit it when they turn it down, so I don’t consider it a waste of my time. I’ve read bios of established authors that talked about them submitting for ten years plus before they got a hit. It was just a matter of practice and persistence.

So I’ll keep aiming for that “maybe – someday.” You never know.

April Submission Blitz – Ambiguities

I always aim for a good fit when I submit, but sometimes it’s just not that easy to figure out what a good fit is. Some venues have a clear theme, like the one that just sent me an acceptance (my first this blitz), and other venues have well-defined style or characteristic preferences, but then you run across the ones that offer a list of “we like this…but we like this equally” where the two preferences are two ends of a significantly varying scale. Talk about ambiguous.

I just finished submitting to one of those ambiguous venues yesterday and I always feel like those submissions are very much a shot in the dark. When the list of items they are willing to consider spans every corner of speculative fiction, I have no idea which of my far-ranging cross-genre tales I should send. I like it when a venue at least leans a little in one direction or another. As much as I’m not fond of calls for submission that are too restrictive, I actually prefer it when they set out some guidelines.

I’m hoping to finish my short “Burn” today so I can submit it tonight. I’ll let you know how that goes.