Mystery Acceptance: Contract Signed, Scanned, and Sent Back

The email came earlier this afternoon, but with one deviation from how these things usually go. It was an acceptance, but what it was an acceptance for was to remain a secret.

Thus: We would like to use your submitted story, “________”, in the ________ anthology. The contract is attached to this message. Please read through it carefully and let us know if you have any questions or concerns. If you do not have any questions, please sign it, scan the full document, and send it back ASAP.

Please do not publicly announce any specifics regarding this yet. . . .

So I will say it’s for a science fiction story and is a reprint, but otherwise details will come when they’re ready. These things happen, usually a case of not all stories decided on yet and the publisher wanting to wait for the entire contents to be set before releasing a general announcement. All a part of the life. And in any event, the task at hand was to download and otherwise handle the contract.

So possibly you’re ahead of me here: This would be another job for the local public library scanner (see September 23, et al.). And so it was done: printed, signed, scanned, and sent back — as slick as that!