Category: Story Announcements

Sales, publications, awards, or anything else good that could happen to a story.

Rejection waiting for me

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 3 Comments

I found a rejection waiting in my inbox when I got home.  It was from Every Day Fiction.

Honestly, I’m glad the story got the boot.  It was more of a scene from a teen horror movie than it was a real story.  I wrote it and felt like I needed to do something with it.  They were right to reject it.  Drivel.

I seldom feel like this when reading over a rejected story.  I sometimes think, “That could be better; I’ll fix it before I send it anywhere.”  But it is rare that I turn my nose up like this.

It was a themed contest entry and it rolled out of my head.  I will keep it in my what-was-I-thinking file along with the story about the doctor that turns into a horseman of the apocalypse, the one with sprites that make you stumble in the woods, and other ideas that were picked too green or perhaps even should have been composted.

I’ve run short of finished stories to submit places. “Poison Inside the Walls” has a new version up at Baen’s and will likely be my next WotF submission (unpleasant subjects aside).  I need to do something with “The Will of Roshambo” but I’m not sure what.  I may try to cut it to flash length; it may work better.  My untitled sound story needs an ending and a deep-tissue rewrite.  I have that Festival of the Naked Man story to start.  Time and I just aren’t getting together well this summer.

Twenty-eight words

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 9 Comments

I am very unhappy.

I received my copy of The Rejected Quarterly today and found more than a few librties taken with my story.  I understand that a little editorial discretion is to be expected, even appreciated, but there comes a point where the author will become offended.

It started with small stuff.  A paragraph split into two paragraphs, a narrative aside comment grouped into quotation marks (a if spoken aloud…by the wrong character).  I took those in stride; they really just changed the perspective of the story.  But then…

In a fairly complex part of the story, where the protagonist explains the root of his psychological problems, twenty-eight words were completely omitted.  It ruined the logic of the story.  The printed version makes no sense. That reflects on me (assuming anyone reads TRQ).  They didn’t ruin a masterpiece, but it was a clever story that comes across a lot less clever when you start scratching your head and saying “what did I miss?”  You missed twenty-eight words.

Why did they do it?  The splice point makes sense from a bad-typesetter perspective, but I sent an electronic copy of the story that should have been pretty much cut-and-paste.  It seems as though the cut was made in order to save the story from spilling over onto the next page.  If they needed twenty-eight words cut, I could have cut from several different places, just sectioning out a joke or a POV reaction.    It’s too sloppy to be an attempted edit.  It was simply sloppiness and is unacceptable.

I am furious and embarrassed.  I had intended to buy copies of the issue as gifts for my mother and maybe some other people.  No longer.  I don’t expect to apply there again.  I wonder if others have had this experience before.  I have not shared my displasure with the editor yet; I’m not sure how to approach it.  All I know is that I’m unhappy.

-Oso Enojado

My July Publications

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

I’m so excited!  I have two stories coming out this month.  My issue of The Rejected Quarterly with “Excuse Me” is out soon.  In fact, I should get my contributor’s copy any day.  Apparently these bookstores carry TRQ, or you can buy a copy directly from their website.  The rejections themselves are often enough to warrant the cover price.  I’ll have a full sales pitch for them once I’ve seen the issue.

My story, “How Quickly We Forget” hits Every Day Fiction on July 29th (my anniversary, as it turns out).  Be sure to read it and give me lots of stars.  You should be dropping by EDF anyway; their supply of flash fiction is perpetual and delightful.

Read Me!

I hate being right

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 2 Comments

As anticipated, the late arrival of the speculative elements in “Glow Baby” elicited a rejection. Sigh. Joni seems to be putting a personal touch on the rejections, crossing out “contestant” and writing in the name, as well as scribbling in an invitation to submit again. Nice of her.

Now it’s time to figure out a new place to try”Glow Baby”. Can’t let it just rest.

Another day, another sale. Sweet

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

My good friends at Sam’s Dot Publishing were kind enough to accept my K-Pax inspired story, “Brother Goo” for publication in their January 2010 issue of Beyond Centauri.  This is a magazine targeting readers from 9 to 18 (an ambitiously wide range).

As I’ve mentioned before (somewhere), my very first short story appeared in one of Sam’s Dot’s (then ProMart’s) e-zines.  I think it was The Fifth Di… but it could have been The Martian Wave.  For the life of me I can’t remember.  I know it fits TFD‘s guidelines better..but I digress.

You can check my bibliography page for a complete list of my sales.  Four (now five) of those were to Sam’s Dot zines.  They are a big reason I’m still writing.

Tyree Campbell, the big cheese at Sam’s Dot, has also been very supportive of me in other ways, agreeing to let me run copies of one of his stories for my Science Fiction Club when I was teaching at UHS and agreeing to a chatroom Q&A session with my club members.  Sadly, no such session ever took place due in part to the attention span of my students (Squirrel!) and another part to the distractions of more mundane aspects of my teaching job.

I won’t break the bank with this sale, either, bringing down a massive six bucks, bringing my earnings for my recent sales to a tax-bracket-shattering twenty-four bucks.  Why do I keep a day job?  Oh yeah, writing isn’t about the money.  (Maybe someday, but not today.)  It’s about sharing a part of myself with others.

Now I can’t wait until I get my contributor’s copy in January.

-Oso

Little sale, big relief

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

The first short story I ever wrote sold to the first market I sent it to (The Fifth Di… I think).  I attribute that luck to good market research and a charitable editorial staff.  Since that inaugural publication, no story has sold to its first market.  Until today.

Big thanks to Jordan Lapp and his staff at Every Day Fiction.  They picked up “How Quickly We Forget” without it being rejected by anyone else first.  The story was inspired by a prompt from Jordan.

Being a friend, Jordan didn’t want to look at it without knowing his editors’ opinions first.  Fortunately they liked it, too.  No word yet on whn the massive three-dollar chec will arrive.  They still have “A Game of Telephone” in their queue, the story I wrote for the CoolStuff4Writers.com all-dialogue contest in May.  Maybe they’ll like that, too.

It’s always good to make a sale, no matter the size of the check.  It’s even better when it’s the firsttime selling to a market.  It’s an added bonus it’s Jordan’s zine.

-Oso

Faster than a speeding “no thanks”

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 4 Comments

Wow.  Clarkesworld took less than 24 hours to reject “Secondhand Rush”.  It usually takes editors several weeks to decide I suck.

So what now?  I printed it out, stuffed it in an envelope, and it’s off to Q3 of WotF.

Why am I bombarding WotF with my stuff?  This will make one per quarter for this contest year.  (Another will surely be ready by the fourth quarter.)  Well, there’s nothing quite like an “honorable mention” rather than a form rejection.  That’s not to say I’m guaranteed at least an HM (if I were, I probably wouldn’t be satisfied with one), but it gives me the “at least it wasn’t a flat rejection” to pad my ego.  The HM also becomes a tidbit to toss on the cover letter, as if to say “relax, editor, this isn’t pure junk”.

WotF also limits my competition tonon-pros.  Even at small mags you have to compete with pros and “friends of the magazine” who repeatedly have their work printed there.  I feel like I get a tiny bit of favoritism from Sams Dot Publishing because I’ve been associating with them for so long (since it was ProMartian under the late James Baker, no relation).  Maybe my quality just fits their needs, but better than half my published stories have been there.  So entering into a blind competition with other semi-pros is a good place for me right now.  Can I win?  Eventually, I bet I can.  (If Jordan can do it… 😛 )  Or maybe I’ll go pro before that happens.  Either way, I think WotF is a good market for a writer in my position to pursue.

-Oso

A sale?

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 2 Comments

I think I made a sale!  Yep, I said I think.  How can I not know?  Well, here’s the email:

I need to know if your story “Excuse Me” is still available. Whether it’s available  or not, or if you choose to not have The Rejected Quarterly publish it, please let me know ASAP, so I can either reserve the space in this issue or put something else in its place. I am finalizing the current issue most likely within the week. If I don’t hear from you in a couple of days I’ll assume you are not interested.

Thanks,

Daniel Weiss

It sounds like the story was accepted and I missed the first correspondence, doesn’t it?  Or maybe that’s just how they roll.  It sure made me contact them immediately.

 

I really like what The Rejected Quarterly stands for, printing only work that has accumulated at least five rejections.  It’s the first story I sent to them.  It’s my time traveling fart story and needed just the right market to run it.  

 

I’ll be sure to follow up when I confirm they actually wanted to run it.  The whole “reserve space in this issue” part makes it sound like it, doesn’t it?  

 

-Oso

 

EDIT: I did indeed make the sale!  I need to send them a soft copy of the story, a bio, and resend my rejections (a couple good ones there).  I have all that…somewhere.  So yay me!  

 

Now I just have to wait out the other five stories.

“Secondhand” reception

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 2 Comments

“Secondhand Rush” made its appearance at Baen’s Bar a few days ago.  Edith Maor was, as always, right on top of things and provided comments within hours of posting it.  She had some good points that really strenghtened my story.  She seems to have a habit of disliking my characters.  Either I really need to work on likeability or Edith and I just disagree.  It happens.  But when I disagree with an editor of a professional magazine, especially a gatekeeper like Edith, I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt.

I also seemed to have been too subtle in a few places.  The ending made reference to something only mentioned at the story’s begining in passing.  I built up the emphasis and made the end reference more direct.  I also clarified a minor character’s involvement (Axel) and made him a touch more important.

The biggest change was to the protagonist.  He was subtly afraid of death in the original (despite being a bit of a daredevil) but without cause.  In the rewrite, [SPOILER ALERT!!] he has multiple sclerosis.  The illness doesn’t change the plot much but changes the reader’s perception of it.  This came primarily from a reviewer questioning how desperate Chang was. It also came a little from Edith’s plea to make Chang more sympathetic.  I know she didn’t mean “pitiable”, but it came from the same place.  Chang isn’t pitiful at all (how many pitiful people climb the exterior of the Statue of Liberty?), just defiant of his illness.

Anyway, I really think this rewrite is a winner, probably 90% of the way to publishability.  If Baen doesn’t want it, WotF is probably the next stop.  I think it will fit their tastes well, based on some past winners I’ve read.  But if I really knew these kinds of things, I’d be writing those stories anyway.

I highly encourage aspiring writers to join Baen’s Bar even if they aren’t ready to post there.  Izanobu can vouch for the benefits of lurking.  Looking at the short, blunt editorial comments left to other authors by the slush editors is enlightening, as is viewing the progression from one iteration of a story to the next.  Pages load a little slow; that’s my only complaint as it impedes my lurk-and-browse technique.

-Oso