First reprint (possibly)

Manuel Royal

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Funny; I came home from a trip to find an e-mail from Tim Johnston at Short Story America, expressing interest in reprinting a previously-published story of mine. The strange thing is I have absolutely no memory of having submitted it -- in October, apparently -- and have no record of doing so, either in my private spreadsheet or on Duotrope. It had been published back in July by First Line Fiction; normally I don't think about submitting stories for reprint.

Yet, I found that on October 14 I created a new, revised file; that must be the version of the story I submitted. It annoys me to have been failed by both my memory and my record-keeping, but that's the simplest explanation.

I had been leery of Short Story America as a venue for first publication, but reprints are a different matter (since I'd never expected to have any). So I accepted Mr. Johnston's offer, although we haven't discussed the details yet. I'm a little surprised he'd be willing to pay to publish a story that's still freely available online at First Line Fiction, but it's also kind of encouraging.

ETA: Now that I look again, that modified file was from October 2009, not 2010. Really wondering about this. Odd.
 
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Phaeal

Whatever I did, I didn't do it.
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Maybe the editor found the story on his own, which would make the reprint offer even sweeter. SSA seems an idiosyncratic market, so I'm not so surprised that they'd reprint a still-available piece.

Anyhow, CGs!
 

Mr. Anonymous

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congrats man, that's a pretty awesome surprise!