Rejectomancy

17 day R from Asimov's. Was starting to get a little hopeful with that one, but oh well lol

Got an R the other day for one I'd been especially hopeful for (G@laxy's Edge), but as of yesterday my Feb story is done and out to beta readers. I will​ have a new story to sub in March!

Ahhh, I got an almost-made-it R from @byss & @pex. Rats. Six months is a hell of a long time to wait for that.

JJ, that sucks. It's what I'm not looking forward to with my Lightspeed special issue sub. Imagining crying in the shower and singing ALMOST DOESN'T COUNT. hahah

Good luck, Bethany! I'd really like to see some more posts in Braggage soon.

Here's hoping!

Eliza: Sorry about the R. Congrats on finishing the latest story though, that's always a triumph!

JJ: Damn. I thought you were going to be posting in Braggage. But since it was an almost, hopefully someone else will snatch it up the next time it goes out.

Bethany: I'm crossing my fingers for you!

JJ Litke said:

Ahhh, I got an almost-made-it R from @byss & @pex. Rats. Six months is a hell of a long time to wait for that.

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Yuck! Those 200+ day waits are the worst. I hope that piece is back out.

31 day form R from Triangulation for their 'Beneath the Surface' anthology. Dang it. Ah well, at least they got it to me today so that I was able to get it in to NewMyths before they close at the end of today.

CharlyT said:

31 day form R from Triangulation for their 'Beneath the Surface' anthology. Dang it. Ah well, at least they got it to me today so that I was able to get it in to NewMyths before they close at the end of today.

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At least they timed it well. Good luck at New Myths.

And I did send mine straight back out after a reread (still love it and think it's solid).

CharlyT said:

31 day form R from Triangulation for their 'Beneath the Surface' anthology. Dang it. Ah well, at least they got it to me today so that I was able to get it in to NewMyths before they close at the end of today.

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Well, I've beat a new personal record: I just got my first Under-2.5-Hour-Rejection. That stings. I got it back out again, but day-um! And to make matters worse, I'm out of ice cream.

10-day personal from Grimdark Magazine. Extremely lengthy, with a ton of specific feedback, but it's from a first reader and doesn't give the impression it was close to being bumped. I have to say, I really appreciate that much effort being put into an R of a piece that wasn't an "almost."

Peace
Ty

I chose the personalized feedback option at Spark, which can adds months onto their response time. But boy, am I glad I did. My rejected story had feedback from about half a dozen readers, all detailed. Most of them thought the writing was beautiful, although there was somewhat of a consensus that the piece didn't offer enough context about the protagonist. Outside of work-shopping a story, it was the best and most thorough feedback I've ever received on a story.

10 day R from Uncanny. That's actually the longest any of my stories has lasted there. I'm pretty sure that doesn't mean much though lol.

I chose the feedback option at Spark too. After hearing your experience, Detective, I'm really glad I did. My story has only been out for 2 1/2 weeks so I'm looking forward to a nice long wait.

15-day form R from an Uncanny first reader. I can't imagine there's a lower form than what I got!

Ah, well. The orphaned anthology piece keeps looking for a home...

Peace
Ty

11 day from Fantastic Stories and a 2 day from F&SF. Another form from Finlay. I was really hoping for some feedback on that one too. Sent them both off to Asimov's and Clarksworld respectively.

Absinthe and Ty - best of luck with your submissions!

**

I got a 3 day from F&SF - Finlay wrote me a nice note, with three points of feedback and an invitation to submit again. The R doesn't sting as much as it could have, for sure. I will ponder his advice before sending it out again.

I also have a story out to Tor (sent on Nov 17) and one at Intergalactic Medicine Show (Feb 5), and I submitted a SF novel to the Angry Robot Open Sub. It's the most I've had out at once - this Write 1/Sub 1 thing works if you let it.

14 day form R from Apex, and it's back out. Thankfully I finished the first draft of another piece today, so hopefully I'll be able to spread the sting of rejection thinner yet.

Aggy B. said:

26 R from Cosmic Roots & Eldritch Shores. Apparently they AREN'T accepting novellas yet. They did invite me to submit something shorter though.

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As I've mentioned before, their personalized feedback can be really helpful. It's actually helped me decide to trunk a couple of stories for the time being now that I understand their weaknesses. I do notice that Cosmic's response time shot up from a couple up days to about a month. Since they are closed for submissions at the moment, I wonder if they got too bombarded to keep up.

As for W1/S1, I had about 10 pieces making the submission rounds but decided over the last week to trunk all but two or three. Along with Cosmic, I managed to get some great feedback from other editors. It made me decide to attempt rewriting some of the stories eventually, instead of getting rejected everywhere and exhausting all my options. Most of those stories hadn't been subjected to any real critique; going forward, nothing goes out without going through that process. But I'm more interested in writing new material than revising all the old stuff at the moment.

Form R by Fox Spirit's Respectable Horror antho - submitted 30 December (day before deadline), rejection 7 March by UK time.

The atory was written with the anthology brief in mind, but I'll be sending it somewhere else as soon as I'm back in the UK (this coming weekend).

Thanks Evelyn! Asimov's sent a 1 day R this morning so I sent the story back out again to DSF. Fingers crossed!

247-day form dejection from The New Yorker on a humor piece. After so much time, I'd persuaded myself an acceptance was coming.

Best wishes,
Peter

pdichellis said:

247-day form dejection from The New Yorker on a humor piece. After so much time, I'd persuaded myself an acceptance was coming.

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You'd think after sitting on a short for that long they could at least give at least a single line of feedback. I don't sub to markets that show response trends starting at 120 days or more with a low percentage of personal R's. Not all markets seem to want slush subs, and that's okay but if it takes them that long before they even get around to a first read it seems clear that they are trying to discourage unsolicited subs without coming right out and saying they don't want them. Frankly, I'd rather they opened tiny reading windows like Abyss & Apex does (one week every quarter).

11 day form R for me from On The Premises. It's back out to Sockdolager.