This week, I reached into my vast collection of rejection letters and pulled out this double-sider from Marietta Publishing:
Side one is a flier advertising Tom Piccirilli’s short story collection The Dog Syndrome. Checking Wikipedia, that places this rejection at around 1997.
Side two is the rejection. It’s a very nice rejection, but unfortunately, I have no idea what story it was for.
If I still had my submission tracking database up and running I could find out, but that requires MS Windows and MS Access and I don’t have either of those anymore. Important safety tip, kids — when possible, avoid proprietary formats!
Incidentally, if you’re looking for a short, creepy, moody novel, you could do worse than Tom Piccirilli’s A Choir of Ill Children. I picked that up at World Horror 2004 and rather liked it.
Viscosity 
handwritten??? mmmmm
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At first I was impressed that you got a handwritten response. Then I wondered, how many submissions does this publisher recieve, that they have the time and stamina to respond by hand? Maybe they just have super hand strength…
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This is the kind of rejection letter writers aspire to…but it bothers me: did he write ‘jells’ or ‘fells’ or ‘sells’? Yes, yes I do have OCD.
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