Living the Fictional Dream

All the stories I have out on submission right now are ones that I sent out before NaNo last year. And some of these are ones that I sent out back last summer and have yet to hear back on — the kinds of submissions that you start to think you’re never going to hear back on.

This morning I actually heard back from one of those markets, and it was a real bummer. Well, rejections are always a bummer, but in this case more so than usual.

Why, you ask? (Or, if not, I’m going to tell you anyway!)

The market actually wanted to publish my story. It’s little ghost story that I wrote back when my writing group was doing the Story Every Day contest. I’ve liked this story since I first wrote it — it was my favorite thing I wrote during those two weeks of madness. Sadly, it has yet to find a home. And this time, it almost did!

The reason I hadn’t heard back yet was because they weren’t sure they were going to be able to continue publication of their ‘zine, so they didn’t want to have me sign a contract until they were sure. And, as luck would have it, it turns out they will not be able to continue publication. So, I got an apologetic “we liked it but…” rejection.

Now, there is some comfort in the fact that they liked it, don’t get me wrong. And I’m grateful to them for telling me what happened instead of just sending a form rejection after all this time. That was nice of them (though a little note a few months ago saying they were considering it or something would not have been amiss).

But ARG! How frustrating. I was so close to having it published, but due to bad timing it is not to be.

While I’m on vacation, one thing on my to-do list will have to be rounding up the most current drafts of all the stories that have been rejected since NaNo (and the ones that are out at markets who did not reply to my query notes!) and send them out to new places. Maybe I’ll be lucky and get a hit.

My little ghost story almost got a hit this time. Maybe the next market will be the one!