So this week I was reading Valley of the Lesser Evil, by Carl Dane, which is not (gasp!) SF, fantasy, or (despite the title) horror, but is, in fact, an honest-to-God Western. It’s even set in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, as Westerns should be.
So some time back—just over 14 years ago, in fact!*—I posted a series of communications I had in the early 1990s with the now-defunct comic book publisher Eclipse, in which I was working with an editor who was really, really interested in publishing some of my comic book proposals. Like, really interested. Like, it was practically a done deal, you know? Practically. The fact that you have never seen my comic books in a drugstore or newstand near you might tell you exactly how that worked out, but in case you are interested in the details, you can read about it here, and here, and here, and also here.
Continue reading “By Request: The Envelope, Please!”It’s been a while since I reached into my giant stack of rejection letters, so I decided it was time to consult the Gods of Randomness to see which section and document I should pull out and scan for everyone’s edification. This week, they chose the letter “M” and the eighth position, which is somewhat appropriate, since that rejection was for a short story called “Love and the Tides of Darkness” (hereafter “LatToD”) that I originally wrote specifically for an anthology called On the Eighth Day, the theme of which was something to the effect of “What happened after the end of the beginning of the Old Testament?”, or something like that. (Hey, it was a long time ago, I don’t remember exactly.) In a nutshell, the concept of “LatToD” is that, near the end of the 20th Century, a potential new Savior of Mankind is born. Heaven sends an angel to guard him, and Hell sends a demon to assassinate him; but the angel and the demon turn out to have been romantic partners, back before The Fall, and they end up getting so sidetracked in squabbling with each other that neither one of them carries out their mission, leaving said potential Savior to go ahead and completely screw up his life all on his own.
Continue reading “Random Rejection: Maelstrom Magazine, “Love and the Tides of Darkness””So this week I decided to ask the Gods of Randomness to pick a folder and position in my vast trove of rejection (and a few acceptance) letters, and lo! They told me I should look in the folder labeled “W” and find the seventh item therein, which, as it turns out, was in fact two items stapled together. Here’s the first one:
Continue reading “Random Rejections: Welsh Publishing Group”So since last week I posted a rather depressing update on my Blue Roses progress, I figured that this week, I would cheer everyone up by dipping into my vast pile of rejection letters. 😁👍
On this occasion, the Gods of Randomness told me I should look in the “S” folder of my expandable file, which, as you can imagine based on the prevalence of “S” in the English language is one of the more well-populated ones. And what should I find on top in that section but two letters from the Canadian magazine Storyteller, of which one was, as expected, a rejection, but the other was one of those rarer beasts, an acceptance. So in the interest of inducing a little mood whiplash, I scanned them both. First, let’s do the rejection:
Continue reading “Random Rejectance: “Storyteller” Magazine”So this week I beseeched the Gods of Randomness to tell me what to pull out of my vast trove of rejection letters, and they told me, Lo! Thou must pick the sixth item in the folder for the letter M! So that’s what I did. But it’s not a rejection letter. It’s not even a form letter. It is, essentially, a brochure—an unsolicited submission, if you will—from the Scott Meredith Literary Agency:
Continue reading “Random, Uh, Brochure: The Scott Meredith Literary Agency”So this week, the Gods of Randomness told me to reach into my giant collection of rejection letters and pull something out of the section labeled “I”. Well, okay, they originally told me to pull something out of the section labeled “P”, but all the good stuff in the “P” section has already been done already. Could it be I’m running out of rejection letters?! Nah, there just weren’t that many magazines whose name started with “P”.
Continue reading “Random Rejection: Indigenous Fiction, “Leech Field””Recently I was reading Old Broken Road, by K.M. Alexander, the second book in “The Bell Forging Cycle”:
So every once in a while when I reach into my giant stack of correspondence to find a Random Rejection, I pull a Random Acceptance instead. This is one of those times.
Continue reading “Random Acceptance: “Blue Murder” Magazine”
Viscosity 