Day: March 4, 2010

Nice Surprise

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 2 Comments

I had a nice surprise waiting for me in the mailbox when I got home: WotF prize money!  Nevermind it’s already spent five times over.  It just makes things feel a little more real.

ADDED: I finally got around to subbing what was my WotF Q1 piece to another market (disqualified from the contest as I am).  I sent it to Clarkesworld.  We’ll see.

I could actually see this one breaking into Analog or something.  Wouldn’t that be sweet?  I don’t send much to Analog because I’m familiar with their tastes enough to know I typically fall outside them.  But I have a system; Clarkesworld and Lightspeed first (what could that take, a week?), then Strange Horizons, then on to others.  I will be banging on all the big doors with this one, not that it’s “so good” — I didn’t really expect much from WotF on this one — but because I now have enough pedigree that someone may give the story a shot.  Plus it’s a little experimental and could pull a wild card spot.  You never know.

Slowly but Surely

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 2 Comments

Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine is an Australian semi-pro market with a very good reputation.  I’ve been trying to break into that one for a while.  Usually their turnaround on stories is very fast, their Duotrope reported median response time is 9 days.  They’ve had one of my stories for something like 33.

Their slush process is fairly transparent with a listing of ms numbers in each of their rounds.  My story finally came out of the first round, the first-read level.  It’s probably a fluke of luck that left my story in round one limbo so long.  I am, happily, on now to round two.  I’ve never made it past round two.  Maybe this time.

Round two is the editor scoring round.  Round three is full of stories they would like to publish, a pool of “good enough” stories from which they fill their magazines.  Still, not all those stories are purchased.  Finding my way into that pool would be a good next step for me.  I wait to find out.  Hopefully that won’t take another month.  Even if it does, a two-month period isn’t so long in this business.  I’ve been waiting on Weird Tales longer than that.