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scifiman

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A while back I got a personal R back from SF&F that said it didn't do anything for me. I took this as being snarky. Any thoughts?
 

mhaynes

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A while back I got a personal R back from SF&F that said it didn't do anything for me. I took this as being snarky. Any thoughts?

I think this is the form letter, actually. A half-sheet with the name of an assistant or associate editor at the bottom? I think I've seen a half-dozen or so of those this year.
 

scifiman

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I think this is the form letter, actually. A half-sheet with the name of an assistant or associate editor at the bottom? I think I've seen a half-dozen or so of those this year.

Yeah, makes sense.
 

Marzioli

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I thought today was going to be a slaughter, considering I'm overdue for at least four submissions (that are getting rejections past my submission date). I only got one, a 2 day rejection from Lightspeed.

Anyone know the statuses of Asimov's submission system? Is it just open and close, or do they indicate if they've read it yet?

And did anyone submit to Borderlands 6 that has some news on what they're up to? I haven't found anything except "they have a lot of submissions and they're slowly getting through them. However, the Duotrope crew 31 hasn't had a single response in months.
 
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victoriajakes

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0-day rejection from Lightspeed today. First 0-day one! Knew it was coming, still stung a little.
 

Izz

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I thought today was going to be a slaughter, considering I'm overdue for at least four submissions (that are getting rejections past my submission date). I only got one, a 2 day rejection from Lightspeed.

0-day rejection from Lightspeed today. First 0-day one! Knew it was coming, still stung a little.
Hugs for you both :Hug2:

Anyone know the statuses of Asimov's submission system? Is it just open and close, or do they indicate if they've read it yet?
It goes from Received to Under Review then, in my experience, to Rejected :D
 

Marzioli

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Thanks Izz.

Victoriajakes, I usually get 0-1 days from them. So when I went to sleep on the second day, I thought perhaps this one was at least being considered. No such luck! The R came an hour after I hit the sheets. :p
 

alexshvartsman

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And did anyone submit to Borderlands 6 that has some news on what they're up to? I haven't found anything except "they have a lot of submissions and they're slowly getting through them. However, the Duotrope crew 31 hasn't had a single response in months.

I sent them a story 62 days ago. Only saw one rejection on Duotrope from them since, quite a while back.

Where did you find the "slowly getting through submissions" info? I recently checked their web site and it didn't appear to be updated since before I submitted.
 

Marzioli

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Where did you find the "slowly getting through submissions" info? I recently checked their web site and it didn't appear to be updated since before I submitted.
Oops! I remembered it incorrectly. The exact line was, "Yes... We are inundated with subs..." in response to a comment on a facebook page that asked, "If we submitted for Borderlands 6 do you let us know if our story didn't make it?" This was on November 15th, posted by Elizabeth Monteleone herself.
 
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katsincommand

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Got my DSF rejection... queried after 41 days. Turns out it got lost in the mail. Duotrope #s don't mean anything until an offer comes in. :p
 

Marzioli

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Got my DSF rejection... queried after 41 days. Turns out it got lost in the mail. Duotrope #s don't mean anything until an offer comes in. :p
True enough. Although I got an IGMS reject an hour ago, which was exactly the average 32 days.
 

Lillie

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Hmmm. Back in September (or something), I happened across Camera Obscura, and their Bridge the Gap challenge. The photos suggested a story to me, so I wrote it.

It made the final round, apparently, but no cigar :( I got it back last night.

The thing is, I have no idea what to do with it now. I suppose it is 'literary fiction', I don't know anything about that, or about the markets for it.
I also can't tell whether my story stands alone, or whether it needs the prompt photos to be meaningful.

I'm thinking of just retiring it, and forgetting I ever wrote it.

Also, to be honest, I feel weird calling anything I write 'literary'. It's all just stuff to me. Stories about stuff. And calling it 'literary fiction' makes me feel like I am saying it's something it's probably not.

Anyway, I'm stumped. No idea what to do with it.
Anyone know about this sort of stuff?
 

mhaynes

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Anyone know about this sort of stuff?

Not a ton, though I've got one recently that I wrote which is in a similar lack-of-genre. I'm sort of faking it through Duotrope on the where-to-send-it question.

As far as the "does it stand alone" question, if you'd like to send it my way PM me and I'll give you my email address and I'd be happy to read it over and let you know if it seems to make sense or left me going "Huh?"
 

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Also, to be honest, I feel weird calling anything I write 'literary'. It's all just stuff to me. Stories about stuff. And calling it 'literary fiction' makes me feel like I am saying it's something it's probably not.

Anyway, I'm stumped. No idea what to do with it.
Anyone know about this sort of stuff?

Literary is about 'stuff', too. :tongue I find though, with most literary, that the author goes for some deeper, thoughtful level in the writing, while ignoring that the story should at least be enjoyable to read. Oh, they also tend to just fizzle out in the end. Note, this is just what I see in general, it's not bashing the genre itself -- I dunno if you can call it a genre, tho.

Anyway...

How about posting it in the SYW boards to see if anyone understands it without the pic. It may just need a little tweaking.
 

Aggy B.

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Just crickets here.

But I got a very scary acknowledgement from Stupefying Stories that I was sure was going to be an R since the Google-mail preview started off with "Dear Contributor, Thank you for giving us the...". But it was just a form 'we got your story and we'll get back to you by the end of January'. Whew.

And, yeah. Crickets. Might be about time to query One Forty Fiction.
 

katsincommand

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Hmmm. Back in September (or something), I happened across Camera Obscura, and their Bridge the Gap challenge. The photos suggested a story to me, so I wrote it.

It made the final round, apparently, but no cigar :( I got it back last night.

The thing is, I have no idea what to do with it now. I suppose it is 'literary fiction', I don't know anything about that, or about the markets for it.
I also can't tell whether my story stands alone, or whether it needs the prompt photos to be meaningful.

I'm thinking of just retiring it, and forgetting I ever wrote it.

Also, to be honest, I feel weird calling anything I write 'literary'. It's all just stuff to me. Stories about stuff. And calling it 'literary fiction' makes me feel like I am saying it's something it's probably not.

Anyway, I'm stumped. No idea what to do with it.
Anyone know about this sort of stuff?

Don't retire it without getting a second opinion from someone who will give you feedback. Writers are notorious for not knowing which of their work is good or not.

I think Uncle Jim is the one who said send it out til Hell won't have it. ;)
 

mhaynes

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Just crickets here.

But I got a very scary acknowledgement from Stupefying Stories ...

I may have to query Stupefying Stories soon. I've got one there at 41 days. But there have been a few 40+ day responses in the last month per Duotrope, so I'm going to wait a bit longer.

I've never had to query a market yet, amazingly. And, I'm actually kind of nervous about it. I know it's completely irrational, but I feel like I'll query and someone will say "Eh, well, we were still thinking about it, but if you're in such a hurry, feel free to have it back." I know we're dealing with professionals and that this wouldn't really happen. But, you know... Irrational brain is irrational.
 

Izz

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Heheh--lemme tell you a story that probably won't help your paranoia any :D

Picking the last stories for issue #2 of C&C. Had a bunch to choose from, and had to turn down two. After much agonizing, i put two aside as the ones to turn down. It just so happened that before i could send out the Rs, both of the writers queried as to the status of their subs, which i in turn replied to with the Rs i had been about to send. They probably thought they'd gotten rejected because they'd queried.

Onto a less paranoia inducing story. My first (and so far only) pro sale came after i queried the status of a sub. In fact, i queried twice. Received a reply the first time that it was still under consideration. Waited a while longer, queried again, got an acceptance back.
 

mhaynes

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Heheh--lemme tell you a story that probably won't help your paranoia any :D

Picking the last stories for issue #2 of C&C. Had a bunch to choose from, and had to turn down two. After much agonizing, i put two aside as the ones to turn down. It just so happened that before i could send out the Rs, both of the writers queried as to the status of their subs, which i in turn replied to with the Rs i had been about to send. They probably thought they'd gotten rejected because they'd queried.

Oh, that's fantastic/terrible! :D

Glad I didn't happen to post a "Hey, does querying make it more likely you'll get rejected" post wherever those two hang out. ;-)

Two Rs today -- Asimov's and Brain Harvest. Stories are already back out.

Still watching the # of subs remaining for that one market tick down. I told my wife earlier tonight that in the next 10 days I'm either going to get an awesome email or a bummer of an email...
 

Izz

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Still watching the # of subs remaining for that one market tick down. I told my wife earlier tonight that in the next 10 days I'm either going to get an awesome email or a bummer of an email...
My money's on awesome :)
 

alexshvartsman

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I may have to query Stupefying Stories soon. I've got one there at 41 days. But there have been a few 40+ day responses in the last month per Duotrope, so I'm going to wait a bit longer.


As a data point, I had a story at Stupefying Stories approaching 40 days and queried. Bruce was super nice - he got back to me a couple of hours later saying that he e-mailed his staff and they'd be making a final decision about my story *within the hour*. Talk about pressure, eh? He did get back to me very soon after with a 'very close but no' rejection, and asked to see more work.

I sent in two more stories (they allow and encourage multi-subs, within reason) and they're both sitting at 35 days each as of today. Guess that can;t be a bad thing since I'm seeing a lot of faster rejections, but hearing something would be nice. My plan is to query at about 45 days if I haven't heard by then. If you do query first, let us know how it goes.
 

defcon6000

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Arg! So Pedestal did it again. They released their issue without giving out rejections, or at least not all of them. How hard is it to send a form rejection? But no, let's make folks wait two extra weeks for their rejection. Bleh.

/rant

At least I sent my submission to Bull Spec as well.
 

mhaynes

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My money's on awesome :)

Well, I'll let you all know as soon as I know/can share. This is one of my favorites of the stories I've written this year. I'd say I'm not getting my hopes up, but, well, I'd be lying...

My plan is to query [Stupefying Stories] at about 45 days if I haven't heard by then. If you do query first, let us know how it goes.

Thanks for the data, Alex. I'm not going to query anyone between now and the end of the year. I figure lots of people are juggling lots of things right now. If I haven't heard from SS between now and then, I'll query in early January. If I do hear something w/o querying, though, I'll let you all know.

Arg! So Pedestal did it again. They released their issue without giving out rejections

Yeah, I don't get that. I briefly considered sending them a withdraw email last night and re-subbing the story. But I've got enough other things to be doing that I can just let them go through their process.