36:

Dear G:

Thank you for submitting to us here at Ideomancer.
You've created a believably unsavory situation and characters in this
piece and the ideas are interesting, but unfortunately it's not quite
right for us at this time.

Best of luck with submitting this piece elsewhere and I hope we'll
be seeing more from you in the future.

Best,
=John Bowker
Associate Fiction Editor
http://www.ideomancer.com

Dear

Thank you for submitting "The Movie" to Strange Horizons, but we've decided not to accept it for publication.

We appreciate your interest in our magazine.

--Karen


Susan Marie Groppi, Jed Hartman, and Karen Meisner
Fiction Editors, Strange Horizons
fiction@strangehorizons.com
Submission guidelines:
http://www.strangehorizons.com/guidelines/fiction.shtml

34:

Dear Submitter,

Due to the volume of manuscripts received each day, we now respond to most submissions via this form. Unfortunately, we have decided to pass on your story. Listed below are the most frequent reasons we reject a submission. Any marked reasons means your story fits into that category of rejections.

[] Does not have an adequate science fiction element
[] Does not have an adequate horror element
[X] Fails to hold interest I like this story. However, too much of it was told via dialogue. Such exposition tends to impede a story.
[] Poorly edited manuscript
[] Does not meet submission guidelines (word count, poor formatting, and so on)
[] Other

We want dark sci-fi. All stories require a sci-fi element. Most stories we print will be a mix of science fiction and horror, but occasionally we'll buy an exceptional work of straight sci-fi (see "Allergies" in issue one) or straight dark fantasy (see "Trees of Bone" in issue three).

Sincerely,

--
--
Mari Adkins
- Apex Digest Editor / HarlanBorg
- E-mail Mari - mari@apexdigest.com
- Apex Book Company - http://apexbookcompany.com
- Mari's Midnight Garden - http://mariadkins.com
- Seesmic - http://seesmic.com/mariadkins
- Skype - mariadkins

33:

Dear Mr. Fielding,

I'm afraid I've decided to decline "Rock and Role." It's a good story, but I had so many excellent submissions that I couldn't possibly fit them all in.

I wish you success in placing this with another market.

Best regards,

Lane Adamson

31 + 32:

Dear Graham,

Thanks for your submission to Raven Electrick. I'm afraid this one didn't
quite work for me, but I hope you'll send another when Raven next opens to
subs.

I apologize for not giving you feedback on your work, but I wanted to put the
emphasis on quick replies with the increase in submission volume.

Good luck placing this elsewhere, and thanks again for thinking of Raven
Electrick.

All the best,
Karen




Graham

Apologies for the long delay in responding and thank you for allowing us to
read "Guyton". We felt it was a good story but still needs quite a bit of
tidying to make it publishable for us, so we going to pass. One of our
editors found it hard to follow and I thought it suffered an identity
crisis: serious or tongue in cheek.

However, another publisher might accept it as it stands.

Good luck, and please keep trying us.

Terry Martin
Editor/Publisher
www.murkydepths.com

29 + 30:

Thank you for offering your story to Orson Scott
Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show. We're sorry to
tell you that we will not be using it; you are free to
submit it elsewhere.

Sincerely,
The Editors

Dear Graham:

Thank you very much for submitting "Eye of Psychosis" to us here at
Ideomancer. The story has a nice atmosphere to it and it's not badly
written, but unfortunately, it's not quite right for us at this time.

I do wish you the best of luck with it and with your writing in the future and
thank you again for considering us as a market for your work.

Best,
=John Bowker
Associate Fiction Editor
http://www.ideomancer.com

28:

Dear Writer,

I'd like to thank you for your submission to Shroud. Unfortunately it was
not selected for publication at this time. As is often the case it was not
an issue of quality, but more an issue of limited space. I truly wish I
could publish and pay for more stories than I currently accept but it's just
not an option. Please do not consider this a "rejection" of your work, but
more of a "we'll have to pass for now".

Thank you, sincerely, for entrusting your creative work with Shroud. We
hope to hear from you again in the near future.

Best,

Tim

I don't mind editors being nice. But as far as I'm concerned Tim, if I submit a story to an editor, and they then they decline to publish it, that's a rejection.

27:

Dear Mr. Fielding,

Thank you for submitting to Afterburn SF. Unfortunately I'm passing on "Bloodsport".

Good luck with your writing.

Best regards,

Karen L. Newman
Editor, Afterburn SF

Well, straight to the point from Karen L. Newman. Onwards, oh Bloodsport. I like this story, and believe that it will find a good home eventually. But its length, at just under 7000 words, and some frankly violent later scenes, don't seem to fit in with what a lot of markets are looking for. It sold to a market whose name I've forgotten, but the market died. Another editor liked it, but it didn't fit in with his magazine. I'm just going to keep hammering it out there until someone decides to buy it.

A New Day

Well, it really does feel like the end of an era for me. Arthur C. Clarke passed away yesterday. The first two adult SF books I ever came across were his, A Fall of Moondust, and the collection, Of Time and Stars. Given to me by my dad from a library sale. The next few weeks, I would read one story a day from Of Time and Stars before school. Each filled me with wonder. I still reread them sometimes. I remember getting 3001: A Final Odyssey for my 16th birthday, the first time I was bought a hardback book. I read it in a day and a night. I read some of it under wristwatch light in a cinema. Totally oblivious to the film on the screen, Mars Attacks!

Then I had a long period where I didn’t read much SF. I read all sorts of other stuff, classics, philosophy stuff, university books for a long time. SF lost its attraction somewhere around the time I started visiting pubs.

When I started to read SF again, I missed out on a lot of Clarke. There were many new names I wanted to explore. Though during a random visit to a library I loaned Rendevouz with Rama.

Last year, during a drive to read as many classics as I could, I read Imperial Earth. It wasn’t his best in my opinion, and I wondered if the adult me had ‘grown out’ of his books. Then around Christmas, I read Songs of Distant Earth. The escape that book gave me helped me through a dark period.

There must be a whole generation of people like me, and a generation before, and a generation before that, who grew up on his books. People who came accross a book somewhere, with a picture of a rocket or a starfield on the front and were hooked for life.

I started outlining a novel today, figuring I may not live ‘til 90 myself and should get on with that kind of thing if I’m to call myself a writer.

If a person was to read those few pages of outline, I don’t think they would say I had been influenced by Clarke. Though I‘d remind them, if I hadn’t read those second hand books a decade or two ago, I wouldn’t be writing at all.

Go in peace, Sir Arthur.

26:

Graham -

Thanks of letting us read "IKAOW" I regret to say that it's just not right for Allegory.

The story is well told. Unfortunately, it's a pretty familiar theme and
lacked any sort of twist or surprise to raise it above the norm. I'm sorry.

Best of luck with this one in other markets.

- Ty Drago
- Editor

I'm still undecided whether I should rewrite this one or not. Maybe I'll just leave it as it is. I do have a soft spot for the story, as it's one of the first I wrote longhand when I was away from my computer for a while. But I've never really figured out what genre it is or who the audience might be. If I can't sell it soon, I may just post it on the blog here. It's been a while since I put any fiction up.

BARREN WORLDS Table of Contents:

Drew Arrants "Man Alone"
Adele Cosgrove-Bray "Project"
Geraint D'Arcy "The Sound of Sun Rising"
Lawrence R. Dagstine "Living Amongst the Lizards"
Tristan Davenport "Elysium"
Graham Fielding "Rats"
Ginny Gilroy "The Secret Life of Jane Gray"
C.E. Grayson "This Abandoned Sky"
Rob Haines "He Would Have Given Them Wings"
Jasmine Hammer "Cleveland"
Erin Hartshorn "Winterset"
Martin Hayes "Something Out of Nothing"
Geoffrey Maloney "The Secret Life of Mars"
Mary Ellen Martin "Tiger’s Eye View"
Tracie McBride "After The Storm"
Ken McConnell "Ocherva"
Kevin James Miller "A Small Show on Double Gamma 3"
Shane Nelson "Alone On This Chance Planet"
Michael H. Obilade "Fallout"
Sue Penkivech "Saying Goodbye"
Shauna Roberts "Elessa the Restless"
Lawrence M. Schoen "Gift Time"
Ted Stetson "Blue Dome of Sky"
Gene Stewart "Bad People"
David Tallerman "Allotment"
Andrew Tisbert "Candhiga’s Corpse and the Birds at the Edge of the Sea"
Geoffrey Thorne "Antiope in Black"
William Blake Vogel III "Otsego Undead"
Christopher Woods "Moon and Bones and Birds"


Barren Worlds from Hadley Rille Books, edited by Eric T. Reynolds with Adam Nakama.

25:

Dear Mr. Fielding,

Thanks so much for your submission. We don't want to run a story involving drug addition right now. Please consider sending us another story in the future.

Sincerely,
Patty Kim

The fastest rejection I've ever recieved. I'll bear that in mind next time I send something to Clonepod, and I will too. And drugs won't be involved.

24:

Hi Graham,

Thanks for submitting "The Eye of Psychosis" to Spacesuits and
Sixguns. This story isn't what I'm looking for, but feel free to
submit again.

Take care,

23:

Graham,

Thanks for your submission but I'm afraid we're unable to take "Handout" for publication. This was a good attempt at trying to tell a tale in only 300 words. Unfortunately it was just too lean. There just wasn't enough here to really sink my teeth into. If you're going to dole out such a small serving, make damn sure it packs more flavour than a saltine.

Best of luck placing this elsewhere.

Kindest Regards,

Gord Zajac
Fiction Editor, ChiZine
http://chizine.com

I like Gord Zajacs style of rejection, honest and down the line. I got a hold notice from another market today too. I'll reveal more when the final decision is made. Getting the notes together for my novel too. It looks like this one is going to be well planned out before I roll into it. And I hope I've learnt a lot over the past two and a half years. April and May are going to be the writing months for this one. And I'll try and focus the blog some on how the writing is going. Hey, after some lean times, writing seems to be getting more fun again.

22:

Hello Graham Fielding,

We received your story submission, "The Movie", on March 2nd, 2008. "The
Movie" is the 4055th submission received by Neo-opsis Science Fiction
Magazine.

"The Movie" does not fit our needs, but thank you for giving us the chance
to consider it.

"The Movie" is a well done horror story, but it doesn't standout for me. The
right publisher will no doubt love this story. I would suggest sending it to
publishers that lean more to horror and dark fantasy.

If you are looking for more publications to submit to, you might want to
have a look at the publisher listings on these sites: http://www.ralan.com/,
http://www.quintamid.com/q/mdb/list, http://www.rimbaud.org.uk/,
http://www.laurahird.com/litmagcentral.html, http://www.duotrope.com/.

Thank you for your submission,
Art director / assistant editor / artist
Stephanie Ann Johanson
Neo-opsis Science Fiction Magazine
4129 Carey Road
Victoria, BC, Canada, V8Z4G5
www.neo-opsis.ca
neoopsis@shaw.ca

17-21:

Well, I’ve been out of touch with my blog recently. I’ve received 5 more rejections in the last few weeks. I’ve had the usual mauling from Clarkesworld. Polite forms from Heliotrope, Eclipse 2 and GUD. Alienskin gave me a mildly encouraging personal rejection. Oh, and I got a rewrite request from someone too.

As I get stuck into my novel over the next three months, more and more updates will probably be concerning that, over the short fiction. Though I may still pop in the odd rejection letter.

Dear Graham,



Thank you for sending "Blood Flowers" for our consideration at Dred. I'm sorry to say we have decided to turn down the story.



I apologize for having taken so long to get back to you, and I thank you for your patience. I hope the slow response will not discourage you from submitting again.



Sincerely,

Graham Fielding--

Thank you for submitting "Ma Celia's Place" to Strange Horizons, but we've decided not to accept it for publication.

We appreciate your interest in our magazine.


--Susan

Re: Rock and Role
(Please quote our reference #9135 in any correspondence.)

Thank you for submitting to Andromeda Spaceways.

Sadly, we find that we can't use your submission at this stage.

Thank you again, and we hope to hear from you in the future.

Notes from the readers:
--------
It's a moderately interesting idea, but there's too much preamble, and
it's too cluttered and disorganised feeling.
-------
Hope that's of some help, and better luck next time!

RE: Rock and Roll

Thank you for allowing us to review your story for Space and Time Magazine. Unfortunately, we wont be able to use the piece. We may, however, find your next irresistible. Keep writing.

12:

Hello Graham Fielding,

We received your story submission, "The Krull Factor", on January 21st,
2008. It appears to be the same tale that you sent to us on March 15, 2007.
I have mark this version of "The Krull Factor" as the 3902nd submission
received by Neo-opsis Science Fiction Magazine.

"The Krull Factor" does not fit our needs, but thank you for giving us a
second look.

The idea is good, but the story still doesn't quite work for me.

Thank you for your submission,
Art director / assistant editor / artist
Stephanie Ann Johanson
Neo-opsis Science Fiction Magazine
4129 Carey Road
Victoria, BC, Canada, V8Z4G5
www.neo-opsis.ca
neoopsis@shaw.ca

Mr Fielding
Thank you for submitting "Bloodsport" for our consideration, but we are
unable to use it at this time.
Regards,
AD

10:

Hello Graham Fielding,

We received your story submission, "The Krull Factor", on January 21st,
2008. It appears to be the same tale that you sent to us on March 15, 2007.
I have mark this version of "The Krull Factor" as the 3902nd submission
received by Neo-opsis Science Fiction Magazine.

"The Krull Factor" does not fit our needs, but thank you for giving us a
second look.

The idea is good, but the story still doesn't quite work for me.

Thank you for your submission,
Art director / assistant editor / artist
Stephanie Ann Johanson
Neo-opsis Science Fiction Magazine
4129 Carey Road
Victoria, BC, Canada, V8Z4G5
www.neo-opsis.ca
neoopsis@shaw.ca
- Show quoted text -

Rejection number 9:

Dear Submitter,

Due to the volume of manuscripts received each day, we now respond to most submissions via this form.

Unfortunately, we have decided to pass on your story. Listed below are the most frequent reasons we reject a submission. Any marked reasons means your story fits into that category of rejections.

[ ] Does not have an adequate science fiction element

[ x] Does not have an adequate horror element

[ ] Fails to hold interest

[x ] Poorly edited manuscript

[ ] Does not meet submission guidelines (word count, poor formatting, and so on)

[ x] Other: I would have liked the horror aspect to be brought out a little more.

Gill Ainsworth
Senior Editor

Get your copy of Gratia Placenti -- the follow-up anthology to Apex Digest's Stoker-nominated Aegri Somnia

*
I guess something useful can be taken from this one. I think maybe the problem with this story, and knowing where to submit it, is that it does have horror elements, it does have SF elements, and neither one quite wins out. There is definate viscera later on in the story. But like Gill Ainsworth mentioneed, it's only part of the story. Thats something I'm going to have to think about in future stories. At least tehy didn't tick the box that I failed to hold interest! They probably didn't want to hurt my feelings. On to the next market Mr. Short Story!

Rejection number 8:

Graham

Thank you for allowing Murky Depths to consider "The Krull Factor". This had some up and down reactions from our editors. It verged on corny but some of us loved the ending, it was set up nicely. We are however going to pass on it as we don't think it quite suites what we are looking for. Keep trying us though.


Terry Martin
Editor/Publisher
www.murkydepths.com

That's a nice encouraging rejection. Murky Depths is a magazine I have a lot of time for too, and I plan on getting a subscription at some point. But, fix up, look sharp Krull Factor, you're off to the next market.

Rejection number 7:

Well, I had an acceptance recently from a new company called Curious Volumes. In the 3 days it took them to accept the piece, I kind of had a crisis of faith. It was one of the old stories that just hadn’t sold to a paying market. A bit of a genre mongrel. And I didn’t really want to have my story published in a non paying venue that had little chance of exposure. Yes, I know, I‘m temperamental and unprofessional. Anyway, I responded to the acceptance, and Robin Martin, Editor-in-Chief, sent me this:

Hello Mr. Fielding,

Due to some software problems that have caused delays it's going to
take a few weeks before we'll be able to edit "I Know an Old Woman
Who..."; I wanted to let you know, so that you wouldn't think we've
abandoned or forgotten about you. We'll do our best to get to your
delightful story as soon as possible.

In the meantime, I hope you're having a lovely New Year.

Best,

Robin

So I sat on my hands for a few days (actually 16 days). Then I replied to Robin Martins E-mail, telling her that I would be happy to wait for her to edit my story, only until the 15th of February this year. Yes, an ultimatum. I made this slightly arsy ultimatum, I believe, because I didn’t have the balls to tell Robin that I didn’t want Curious Volumes to publish what in my mind was a substandard work of fiction with my name attached. Anyway, Robin Martin showed herself to be the more assertive person when she replied:

Mr. Fielding,

I'm sorry you feel that we are "sitting on" your story. There are
several manuscripts ahead of yours and we will be unable to respond by
February 15th, therefore we are withdrawing our offer to publish it.

Best of luck to you with marketing this elsewhere.

Sincerely,

Ms. Robin Martin,
Editor-in-Chief,
Curious Volumes Publishing

So, there you go, a private little saga. My cowardice and inability to be decisive won through in the end. I’ll be sticking the story I sent them in the trunk where it belongs with those two crap novels I wrote, and about forty other short stories, some of them written under the influence of Alcohol and Caffeine.

I wished Ms. Robin Martin luck with the venture in a short reply email. I’ll be watching the progress of Curious Volumes to ensure that I haven’t somehow missed out on something. But between me and you Blog reader, I don’t think I have.

Sunday Ramblings

Current Reading - “Dying Earth” by Jack Vance
Current Listening - Nothing

So, I’m rambling. Forgive me. I started writing my fourth short story of the year toady. 1500 words in the can. It’s definitely horror. I went into plotting it a bit more before I started. I read maybe twenty short horror stories, wedged in amongst my usual reading schedule, and tried to break them down and analyse how they worked.
Then I made some notes on my own story, who I wanted it to be about, where and when. I tried to think about an Odyssey Writing podcast episode

I found it pretty useful for my needs. But we’ll see how that story pans out first!

Well, its a rejection deluge!

Dear Graham:

Thank you for sending your story to Electric Velocipede. Unfortunately, it isn't what we're looking for.

Thank you for thinking of Electric Velocipede.

Sincerely,

John Klima
Editor
Electric Velocipede
http://www.electricvelocipede.com

Graham,

Thank you for sending "Ma Celias Place" our way. I'm afraid we'll be taking a pass this time. There's a good strong sense of voice here (though I"m not sure the lack of an apostrophe in "Celia's" is doing much work), but the story on the whole feeling a little lacking in resonance.

Best of luck placing this one elsewhere.

Cheers,
Hannah Wolf Bowen
Fiction Editor
http://chizine.com/

Graham,
Thanks for your understanding and for resending your piece. I'm sorry to say that it doesn't work for us, although I think it's an interesting idea and suggest you consider working it. Thanks again, I really do appreciate that you shared your story with Sniplits.
Best,
Anne

Current Listening - Sonny Rollins - “Saxophone Colossus”
Current Reading - Stephen Jones ed. - Mammoth Book of Best New Horror

Well, I’m in my writing time right now, and I’m basically skiving off for a few minutes to write this blog. I have two new first drafts done, one Sci-fi story, which is going to need to be gutted and rebuilt from the top in the second draft, and an odd horror story that will also need some gruesome operations if it ever wants to face the world. Today I’m into the last third of a character story about a man trapped in his own routines and cycles. It’s my favourite so far, but I can already see where it needs to be chopped and changed. I’ve been reading some modern horror stories recently, and I plan to make the next story I read a horror set in ye olde Glossop, my home town. Based around the footpath that winds around the bottom of a long Victorian railway bridge - a well known local suicide spot. We’ll see.

I’ve been writing every day of the year so far, with my editing hat firmly off my head. And I’ve been reading voraciously. Three books on the go, two anthologies and one novel. It’s a good feeling, and I’m sure that the 1500 words on the page I get down encourage the creative monkey in my brain to churn out a couple more story ideas. I’m aiming to get ten first drafts written, with three stories submitted by the end of March. It seems, at the moment, a reasonable goal.

I’ve chased up a couple of markets today too that have had some of my stories for a while.

I still want to write a few flash pieces too. Can’t seem to get the ‘flashing’ part of my brain to come up anything that would fit that length.

Peace out!

Graham

Another form to take me to three rejections so far:

Graham Fielding,

Thank you for sharing your story "Foetal Attraction" with the Three-
lobed Burning Eye magazine. And thank you for your patience. Alas,
after careful consideration, we have decided this piece is not for
us. I wish you all the best in finding its home.

Please feel free to report our response time to Duotrope Digest
(http://duotrope.com/market_222.aspx).

Regards,

Andrew S Fuller
Editor, 3LBE

Rejection number 2:

Dear Graham Fielding:

Thank you for your submission.

We appreciate the opportunity to read your work but Remains has not been selected for publication.

Thanks for thinking of us with this flash fiction story and for your interest in Ideomancer.

Best,

D Braum, for

Well, another form. Still, I'll send this baby right back out there.

Current Listening - Sun-Ra “Hiroshima”
Current Reading - Best New SF 20 - Ed. Gardner Dozois

Well, as I’ve bashed away at the second short story of the year, it’s slowly become more ambitious and complex. Its probably going to come in at between 7-9k. Which is good for a first draft. I hope to whittle it down to 5-6k in the final. I’m just glad to be getting the stories down. Once the first draft is done, it’s done. I can file it away and come back to it later on.
I’m getting an itch to check out some of the stories I trunked last year. One or two of them might be worth another go over. We’ll see. I’m content to be writing all new stuff at the moment.

I’ve been keeping a list of books I read recently. I’ve scored them out of ten, from my individual perspective.

Damnation Alley - Roger Zelazny 7
Pavane - Keith Roberts 9
The Puppet Masters - Robert Heinlein 1
Imperial Earth - Arthur C Clarke 6
Night Train - Martin Amis 7
The Tesseract - Alex Garland 8
Atrocity Exhibition - JG Ballard 9
Looking for Jake - China Mieville 8
The Quantity Theory of Insanity - Will Self 8
Roadside Picnic - Arkady and Boris Strugasky 7
Mind bridge - Joe Haldeman 6
Farenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury 8
Saturday - Ian McEwan 9

I’m trying to get boned up on the SF classic novels. I’m also trying to get up to date with the current short story markets. I’ll be picking up some more Dozois YB antho’s soon, along with the horror and SF ones. I also like to throw in a bit of literary fiction. To read a writer like McEwan after something like Mindbridge is a real demonstration of the importance of a strong style over flashy concepts. After all, the flashy concepts tend to have a short shelf life. A great style will resonate further down the years.
I wonder, will all the stories written now about the Singularity seem quaint and dated to the readers of the future, like the heavy handed cold war parables of Heinlein et al .seem to me now? Or is that really the future? Right, enough naval gazing, back to that short story.

Current Listening - John Coltrane

Interzone bin the beloved Bloodsport for my first rejection of 2008.

Dear Graham,

I'm sorry but "Bloodsport" is not for Interzone.

Immense time pressures necessitate this reversion to a standardised reply, for which the submission devouring destroying analysing equipment apologises (and for the purple prose, as well…;-). In short: this is not for us, but – you never know – it might be for someone else.

Thanks for sending it my way, good luck with placing this elsewhere, and keep an eye out on our website ( http://www.ttapress.com/ ) or Ralan's Webstravaganza ( http://www.ralan.com/ , for the rare few of you who don't already know) for the 2008 reading periods: we are working on them.

--
Best regards,

Jetse

Jetse de Vries
Co-editor, Interzone

Oh well. That was a long shot. I'm running out of places to send Bloodsport. It's fairly long, (almost 7k) which limits my choices. And it is, frankly, extremely violent in places. Which a lot of people don't like. I've never quite figured out if it's science fiction or horror either. I don't quite think it's 'splatter punk', but then again, I don't really know what splatter punk is. I do like this story though, and I know one day I'll find an editor who does too. Dave Duggins at Spacesuits and Six-guns really liked it, but it didn't fit into his magazine. Though his kind words of encouragement really boosted my confidence at a time when I hadn't sold anything. And the woman at a magazine whose name I can't remember bought it, but then collapsed and died (The magazine, not her). It began with an A.

Still having to harass Blood, Blade and Thruster to pay me. I've told them they could make a charitable donation to either Escape Pod or to Duotrope digest in my name. I've left it to trust that they carry this out. Did get a swift reply back from one of the editors (he didn't offer a name) last month to my initial complaint. Very apologetic and polite, and he reckoned I'd been paid via PayPal. Which would have been difficult, as I don't have a PayPal account. I say He, but I don't know if I was communicating with a man or a woman.

I hope I'm not one of these writers that kills magazines. My first sale killed the magazine whose name I have forgotten stone dead. My second sale didn't kill Blood, Blade and Thruster outright, but fatally wounded them. The date of the 3rd issue which would contain my story started to creep slowly back, first to June, then still further and further away like the Bedroom wall in Terry Gilliams Time Bandits. Finally, it popped onto their website, not as a print magazine as I had been led to expect, but a PDF. A month or so later, I came across it by chance. At first, I thought my story wasn’t in it, because no mention of me was made in the ToC. But it was in there. I didn’t read the magazine, as I wasn’t best pleased. I’m not going to not recommend it, because of course it contains a story by me., but above all else, at least it’s free to download as a PDF.

I’m hoping my luck has changed now. Drabblecast made an excellent job of bring my story to life. It was only a two minute job, but Norm Sherman really did a good reading. If you listen to Podcasts, Drabblecast is well worth your time.
And now Eric T Reynolds is putting me in Barren Worlds. Eric seems a bit more serious and clued in than the folk at BBT and the other magazine whose name has escaped me.
Hopefully I’ll sell a few more this year, and soon, whisper it, I might even refer to myself as a writer. Which I’ll do right after signing a contract for my first professiona sale. Albeit I’ll still be a writer at the polar opposite of the spectrum from Stephen King.


On the writing front, I finished up that story I wasn't too happy about. I think I overstretched myself a little on it, to be honest. And I'm not quite skilled enough to pull off what I want to do. I have Gardner Dozois to thank for my recent rash of ambition. I've been reading one of his recent YBSF anthologies, and been well impressed by the sheer length and breadth of talent on offer from modern spec fic writers. That was the reader part of me which was impressed. The writer part of me froze like Lot's wife. I spent a few days moping, and wondering how I could ever compete with such greatness. But now the stories are trickling out. I think 'Pod Larkin' will be seen as a folly, but the one I started on today seems a little better. We'll see. Ambition is good.

Keep going!
Graham

Current Listening - "Spacelab" by Kraftwerk

Well, here is the cover artwork for Eric T. Reynolds Barren Worlds:



Pretty excited. This is the first time my work will appear in an actual book.

On the writing front: I've been hacking out a short story, I liked the idea when I thought it up, but so far it doesnt seem to have panned out on the wordprocessor. I'll probably get it completed tomorrow. And it may never see the light of day, but it's gotten my juices flowing and I have a couple more ideas waiting to be written. Which is always good.

Graham

Well, I can now reveal what I've been so secretive about recently:


"I'd say we're okay now if you'd like to announce that your story will be included in the Barren Worlds anthology. We're trying for a February release--wish me luck, but it will be no later than March (and I think we can make the Feb timeframe). I will post something very soon on my website, www.hadleyrillebooks.com, and my LJ ericreynolds.livejournal.com as well."

Best,
Eric Reynolds
Hadley Rille Books

Very exciting! I look forward to being involved in this project. Eric Reynolds has already published some very talenterd writers in his previous anthologies, and I'm honoured to be onboard for this one.