Last night I had a rejection from The Harrow, which is a damn shame because I really love the faux academic journal ambience of that particular zine, and I’d love to get in there one of these days. Still, as with the first one that they bounced back a few weeks ago, they’ve given me a nice, detailed critique (which rather worryingly describes my piece as an “experiment”, but never mind), so I’m not massively unhappy. But it did spur me on to (a) resubmit something else to them, (b) submit the piece in question somewhere else and (c) dredge up a few more odd pieces that were currently “resting”. This temporarily brought my oustanding subs count to 43, the highest it’s ever been.
I say temporarily, because just 38 minutes after submission, I had a reply from Bewildering Stories saying that they were accepting my piece “Desert Culture”. I’d despaired of finding a home for this one (despite early versions of it being winners first in the Cafe Doom Flash Challenge and then in the SlingInk Frantic Fiction Challenge), because as my mate Ian from the VWC says, it’s “droll”, and droll’s a hard sell.
42 to go …