Another one bites the dust

I am now up to five sales, with the latest being to Jersey Pines Ink for their “Trees” anthology.

At the same time I have had 13 stories rejected, but the 2 or 3 to one balance seems quite good to me. One thing I have learned from some of the positive rejections (if that is not an oxymoron) is that the editors often like the story but it doesn’t fit what they are looking for. I try my best to make sure the subject and length are right, but you often have to guess at the tone of the magazine or anthology and it would still be up to individual editors. You can get a story rejected by one outlet but accepted by another.

I may have mentioned I am quite organised in managing submissions – all of my stories are in a table with a word count, and as I send them off I write down where they have gone and that they are “pending”. When I hear back that changes to “accepted” or “rejected”. I suppose if I was really organised I would also add what they say are the typical reply times.

Being organised is necessary because I had accumulated a lot of stories during my lockdown challenge of writing one a week, and there were also those published in my e-book The Cat Factory and other stories (still available on Amazon!!). Some outlets won’t accept simultaneous submissions (i.e. sending it to more than one place at the same time) and many won’t accept stories that have been published elsewhere, even on blogs (which is why I may now say what I’ve written but not make it accessible in case I can sell it).

I’ve still got quite a few stories which haven’t found a home and am writing more but I’ve also been trying my hand at writing stuff for themed anthologies from scratch. I’ve not yet reached the heights of Roger Zelazny, who wrote a story incorporating the theme of three different anthologies and sold to all of them, but writing “on demand” is fun. The theme has to appeal to me but luckily I have a broad range of interests.

How do I know where to send them? There are two very useful resources I use. One is Erica Verillo’s blog Publishing, and Other Forms of Insanity and the other is the Authors Publish blog. Both do regular updates about places seeking writing with a brief outline of what they are after in terms of genre, length etc and the deadline. There is some overlap between the two in terms of which opportunities are featured but often each has things the other has missed.