Aeryn’s Archives: Roll Credits

Today on Aeryn’s Archives I’m doing something a little different. Instead of looking at a single piece of work I published, we’re gonna look at, uh, all of them. Some of you may have noticed the professional credits page on the blog, but it’s honestly not something I expect folks to read. In fact, it’s mostly for me, a place where I can keep track of everything I do. Sure, it gets a few views now and then, but it’s just a boring list of I wrote this, edited that, and produced this other thing.

Anyway, I rarely talk about my writing history/career as a whole because, well, I’ve done a lot of different things that don’t fit neatly together. This seems like a decent way to approach the plurality of my professional writing experience in a way that’s somewhat succinct and hopefully not as dreadfully dull as looking at a pages-long list. 🙂

Total Writing Credits: 280

If I did my math right, I have 280 distinct writing credits. That’s 280 things my name appeared on/in alongside the word author or designer or whatever. Now, this comes with a couple caveats. Not all of this is fiction, and some of it is self-published. So anyway, let’s break this down into three categories.

Fiction Credits: 108

When I say fiction, I mean fully narrative fiction. It’s kind of a weird distinction to draw because a lot of my game design credits are fiction(ish), but they have that historical documentary vibe, which I consider a slightly different beast. Anyway, these 108 credits run the gamut between short stories, flash fiction, microfiction, and longer works like novels, novellas, and novelettes. Oh, and a handful of them are co-author credits. I’d say about half these credits are things I published with Privateer Press before and after my tenure there and fall under media tie-in. The others are all mine, the short stories and whatnot you see me talk about on this blog.

Game Design: 102

Game design is a broad term, and I use it here to describe any non-narrative writing in service to a tabletop roleplaying or miniatures game. This category includes things like Dungeons & Dragons adventures I wrote for companies like Goodman Games and Wizards of the Coast, game material for WARMACHINE and HORDES, the principal tabletop miniature games produced by Privateer Press, and, finally, a whole bunch of history-book-style articles exploring the various IPs of the games I worked on (mostly the Iron Kingdoms). Like above with fiction, a handful of these are also co-authored.

Now, as I said before, some of these credits are fiction(ish), and some folks might consider something like the voice-y Gavyn Kyle articles I wrote for No Quarter magazine as fiction. That’s cool, and I wouldn’t put up much of an argument, really, but to me they fit more comfortably under game design.

Self-Published Game Design: 70

Finally, we have the digital gaming supplements and adventures I wrote and produced under my own little RPG company Blackdirge Publishing between 2005 and 2010. All these supplements are designed for use with Dungeons & Dragons, either 3.5 or 4th edition. Running this little “company” was a good experience, and I learned a lot from it. I separated these out because they’re somewhat different than the other work I’ve done and I acted as author, producer, and publisher all at once. Most of these are micro-supplements, just a few pages long. I did produce a handful of longer ones, though rarely more than 30 pages or so.

So there you have it. My writing bona fides, such as they are. Of course, I also have a bunch of editing and production credits, but those are even less interesting than the writing credits. 🙂

That New Story Smell

I recently finished a short story, one I really like. After letting my critique partners work it over, I revised the piece, shaved off 500 words, and now I’ll start submitting it. What I want to talk about in this post is the wonderful, exhilarating experience of completing a new story and sending it out on it’s first submission. Let’s dive in.

I like lists. Maybe you’ve noticed. So here are three things I love about finishing a new story.

  1. The best thing I’ve ever written. This isn’t always true, of course, but often when I finish a new story I feel like I’ve grown as a writer, if only a little. It might just be the bright, shiny allure of NEW THING that makes me feel this way, or in the case of this particular story, it might be I pushed myself, tried something new, and as scary as it was, I did it (and I think it worked). That feeling of accomplishing something new is pretty sweet.
  2. Limitless potential. A new story has a blank slate. It hasn’t been rejected yet, and, at least for me, it’s the best I can make it without additional objective feedback. You know, the kind that comes from editors in the form of rejections. I almost always start at the top when I submit a new piece. I send it to all those dream, bucket-list publishers, and, yeah, I might even imagine how awesome it would be to place a story there. I don’t spend too long on fantasy island, though. Cracking those top markets is tough, and you have to be pragmatic about these things. Still, a new story lets you dream a little, and that’s a good thing.
  3. Sweet validation. One thing that makes me feel like a real, honest-to-god writer is finishing something, be it a short story, a novel or, hell, even a blog post. The knowledge that I can get an idea, execute that idea, and produce something that is (hopefully) of publishable quality is a great confidence booster. Never mind the dozen half-finished stories collecting dust on my hard drive, this time I did it. This time I overcame the fear and doubt, pushed through, and made a new thing. I’ll bask in that glow until the first rejections arrives. 🙂

So that’s a bit about how I feel when I complete a new story. How do you feel when you finish a piece? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

Aeryn’s Archives: Paint-Eater

Today’s installment of Aeryn’s Archives features a short story called “Paint-Eater.” It’s an interesting piece in that it’s one of those stories that took a lot of refining (and a bunch of rejections) to get to a place where it was sellable. I’ll discuss that further below, but in the meantime you can head on out to The Arcanist and read the story by clicking this link or the illustration below:

“Paint-Eater” began life as the very first flash fiction piece I attempted way back in April of 2012 in a one-hour flash fiction writing contest. The story was well received enough (it took second, I believe) that I thought, “Hey, maybe I should write more of this flash stuff.” Despite that, I viewed my first flash as simply an idea for a story rather than a story unto itself, so I set about expanding it into a full-fledged short story. I still believe that was the right decision; the idea was too big to fit into 1,000 words. I ended up with a 3,500-word short in 2013, but I didn’t start submitting it until 2016. I’m not sure why I waited that long, but once I started sending the story out into the world the rejections rolled in. I was sitting on seven rejections when the eighth arrived with some solid feedback. The editor recommended a change to the story that was absolutely the right thing to do. Still, it took me a full year to revise and submit it again.

After a big revision I sent “Paint-Eater” in to The Arcanists Magical Story short story contest, where it took third place. So the edits I made seemed to be effective, and it was nice to finally place this one. Sometimes that’s what it takes to sell a story. It needs to evolve as you evolve as a writer, as this one did (and a few pointers from kindly editors don’t hurt either). I learned SO MUCH about writing and submitting between the time I wrote this story and the time I sold it, and “Paint-Eater” definitely benefitted from my continuing education.

Anyway, head out to The Arcanist and give “Paint-Eater” a read. 🙂

The Waiting Game Part 2: The Great Theory

Submission wait times are an oft-discussed topic among writers and much rejectomancy is applied to how long a story is pending with a publisher. I’ve covered it before, some four years ago in this post: Submission Protocol: The Waiting Game. When a story is held longer than usual by a publisher, authors begin to prognosticate. Signs are read, the stars are consulted, and the bones cast in an attempt to divine what this delay could possibly mean. The great theory is this: the longer a publication holds your story, the more likely they are to accept it. Along with that theory is the idea that rejections generally arrive faster than acceptances. But is all that true? Let’s dive into the numbers and see if we can’t shed some light on this.

The last time I tackled this issue, I had far less submission data to work with. Now I have lots more, so we’re gonna approach things from a more data-driven angle. I currently have 449 submissions tracked on Duotrope. When we subtract pending subs and those I’ve withdrawn, we’re left with 423 submissions. Unfortunately, I need more info than many of these subs provide. I need to know the average return time (how long it actually takes) for the publisher AND the estimated return time (how long the publisher says it will take). When I sort for subs that meet both criteria I’m left with an even 200. Of those 200 submissions, 182 resulted in a rejection and 18 resulted in an acceptance.

That’s a sample size, but a pretty good one, so let’s look deeper at the numbers.

Acceptances

If the great theory holds, then all my acceptances should exceed the average return time and probably the publisher’s estimated return time. But did they?

Out of the 18 acceptances, only 5 were held longer than the average return time and only 3 were held longer than the publisher estimated return time. Now, take these numbers with a grain of salt, as this is a pretty small sampling of acceptances. The markets that held stories past average and/or estimated return times are pro markets, where that might be more expected. So, no conclusive evidence here, but let’s see if the rejections and their much larger sample size tell us something different.

Rejections 

Again, the theory states that rejections should come quicker than acceptances and be within or under the average and estimated response times. So let’s look at the 182 rejections I have and see what we see.

Of the 182 rejections, 130 of them arrived before the average return time and a whopping 166 arrived before the estimated return time. That’s 71% and 91% respectively. So, it looks like responses to rejections do typically arrive faster. But what about the rejections that took longer than the average and estimated return times? Anything special about them? Well, sort of. The percentage of personal rejections, further considerations, and shortlists was definitely higher, about 31%, as opposed to about 15% in the rejections that arrived quicker. So it does seem like you’re more likely to get a “better” rejection when your story is held longer, but it’s important to understand that a lot of top-tier markets only send form rejections, even if your story is held quite a while.

Does the great theory–that a story held longer is more likely to be accepted–hold water? I wish I had more conclusive evidence that it does, but I don’t. That likely has a lot to do with the markets that accepted my pieces that also had all the data I needed. So I’d say the jury is out. As for rejections, I think I have enough of those to state it does seem like a story held longer is more likely to receive a “good” rejection, a personal note, a further consideration, etc. I had a much larger group of submissions and publisher there, so it’s possible those results do support the idea that acceptances take longer too.

Of course, all this is classic rejectomancy and should be viewed as such. In other words, don’t get too hung up on how long your story is being held. It might mean something, and it might not, but you can definitely increase your anxiety level by obsessing over it. (This is absolutely a “do as I say and not as I do” moment.)

Thoughts on this? Evidence of your own? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

365 Rejections: A Year’s Worth of No

Yesterday I received my 365th rejection since I started tracking my submissions seriously through Duotrope back in 2012. I think that’s kind of a cool milestone, and, well, like the headline says, it’s a whole year’s worth of rejections. Anyway, I thought it might be fun to dig into the numbers and see what 365 rejections looks like. First, let me offer up proof that I’ve actually hit this specific number. Below is a screenshot from my Duotrope account:

I’ve (crudely) circled the important things in red and removed the story and publisher name from my very first rejection through Duotrope way back in May of 2012. Now here are some interesting data point from those 365 rejections.

Unique Stories – 82

I have 82 distinct stories rejected, though a few of these were submitted as flash, rejected, then expanded to longer pieces, and also rejected. I went ahead and lumped those together as one story. Let’s look closer at the numbers on the stories.

Accepted: I managed to sell 41 of the stories in my rejected list. That’s exactly half, and that’s not too shabby. I think this further illustrates a couple of things I say all the time on this blog: selling a story is often about right story, right market, right time and even good stories get rejected. Here you see 41 stories that were rejected at least once (probably a lot more) but eventually sold.

Ten-Spots: Of the 82 stories rejected here, 11 of them were rejected 10 times or more. The good news is that I actually sold 7 of those stories. Again, this further illustrates that rejections are inevitable, even for good stories, even for stories you eventually sell to a pro market.

Unique Markets – 105

I have been rejected by 105 distinct markets. Some of these markets, like The Arcanist and The Molotov Cocktail, run contests as well as accept standard submissions. Those are separate entries in Duotrope, but I counted them as one market. Also, publishers like Flame Tree Publishing that run multiple anthologies I counted as a single market. Let’s look dig deeper into these numbers.

Lots of No: Of the 105 markets I submitted to 11 of them have rejected me more than 10 times. Most of these are top-tier pro markets and hard to crack. That said, I have managed to sell one or more stories to 4 of these markets. I hope to improve that number this year.

Pay: Going off Duotrope’s definitions of pay scale, which divides markets into Professional (.08/word or more), Semi-Pro (.01/word to .07/word), and Token (under .01/word), the markets I submitted to broke down as such.

  • Professional – 44
  • Semi-Pro – 51
  • Token – 10

One small caveat. The definition of professional has changed a few times since I’ve been submitting, mostly based on the SFWA’s recommendation for what should be considered a professional rate. If a market qualified as professional when I submitted a story to it, then I counted it as a “pro” market.

Status: Of the 105 markets that rejected me, 44 of them are not accepting submissions any longer. Duotrope codes these reasons as follows. Closed – The market has permanently shut down.  Believed Defunct – This indicates the publication is believed to be no longer active. DNQ – This indicates the publication does not qualify for a full listing. On Hiatus – This indicates they are closed indefinitely to submissions and may or may not re-open at a later date.

The markets that rejected me that fall under these categories break down like this.

  • Closed – 20
  • Believed Defunct – 6
  • DNQ – 8
  • On Hiatus – 10

In my experience, markets listed as DNQ and a number listed as On Hiatus (but not all) are in truth closed, but they haven’t made any kind of official announcement. I present these numbers simply to illustrate how tough it is to for a short story publisher to make it these days.

More Fun Facts

As you can likely tell, I like data. I find the little nuggets of information you can find in the numbers to be pretty interesting, if not particularly useful. The following bits of lore pulled from my 365 rejections fall into the latter category, but, hey, let’s look at them anyway.

Days of Doom: The most rejections I’ve received in a single day is 4. That surprised me. I thought there would be at least one 5-spot in there, but nope. I’ve done the quad twice, on 10/30/18 and 5/15/19. I’ve done the hat trick (3 rejections) a bunch, seven times to be exact.

Months of Mayhem: There have been six months where I received 10 or more rejections. It feels like there should be more, but the numbers don’t lie. My most rejected month, however, was January of 2018, where I received 15 rejections.

Well, that’s the skinny on my 365 rejections. How are your submission (and rejection) endeavors going. Tell me about it in the comments.

Submission Top 10: Most Subbed Stories

Time for more submission greatest hits and another top ten list. This time we’re looking at the short stories I’ve submitted the most and what has become of them: submissions, rejections, acceptances, etcetera.

Yeah, I know there are actually twelve stories on the list below. That’s because of the ties (look at all those elevens), and, hey, I’ve already done some posts in this series, and top ten looks better in a headline. 🙂 Okay, let’s take a look.

Story Subs Reject Accept Other
Set in Stone 27 24 0 3
Paper Cut 18 17 (2) 1 0
Caroline 17 15 (4) 1 1
The Scars You Keep 16 4 0 2
After Birth 12 11 0 1
Bites 12 11 1 0
A Point of Honor 11 10 1 0
Teeth of the Lion Man 11 11 0 0
The Back-Off 11 10 1 0
What Kind of Hero 11 10 1 0
When the Lights Go On 11 10 1 0
Paint-Eater 10 8 (1) 1 1

So that’s a total of 167 submissions, 141 rejections, and 8 acceptances. The rejections in parentheses represent the number of reprint rejections a story has received. All this works out to a 5% acceptance rate (rounding up), which is way, way down from my average of about 15%. Here’s the weird thing, though; I think some of these stories represent my best work (some clearly don’t, and we’ll get to that). If that’s the case, why did they rack up all those rejections? Let’s apply some rejectomancy and see what we can see.

  1. Tough Markets. Like I said, I think some of these stories represent my best work, and as such, I sent them to top-tier professional markets with acceptance rates around or below 2%. Some of these stories received personal rejections or were even shortlisted at those markets, and a couple did eventually sell to a pro publisher. In other words, this may be an example of something I say a lot on this blog: even good stories get rejected.
  2. Weird Genre. Stories like “Bites” and “The Back-Off” have elements of horror, urban fantasy, and crime all rolled into one, but they don’t really live comfortably in any of them, and I found them difficult to place at markets that specialized in specific genres. When I dialed in my submission targeting and submitted these stories to markets that published a wide range of speculative fiction, I did better and eventually sold them. This is, of course, rejectomancy at its finest, but I have anecdotal data in the form of personal rejections that lead me to believe my theory is at least in the ballpark for some of the markets I sent these stories to.
  3. They’re Not Ready. The truth is that the four stories up there with zeo acceptances have racked up all those rejections for a reason: they’re not good enough yet. Most of them suffer from an acute case of premise-itis, which is where I’ve come up with a good concept, fallen in love with it, and then failed to build a good story around it. I believe three of the stories can be fixed with a strong revision, but “Set in Stone” needs a complete rewrite or possibly just exile to the trunk (I mean, 24 rejections is A LOT).

So that’s my twelve most subbed stories. Tell me about some of your well-travelled tales in the comments.

Aeryn’s Archives: Night Games

Hey, here’s another installment of Aeryn’s Archives, my series of shameless self-promotional posts about works I’ve published over the fifteen years or so I’ve been writing and editing professionally. The story I want to talk about today is called “Night Games” and it’s easily one my favorite pieces I’ve written. I will also go so far as to say it’s one of the best things I’ve written. You can draw your own conclusions when you read/listen to it, but it’s one of the few stories I’m confident enough to share without (much) fear people will hate it. 🙂 “Night Games” was most recently published by the good folks at Pseudopod, and their audio rendition of the story is just awesome. So before I bore you with the whys and whatfors of the story, head on out and listen to it right here or click the photo below.

So why do I love “Night Games” so much? Pretty simple. It combines two of my favorite things: vampires and baseball. I think it’s quite evident when an author really loves what they’re writing about. That passion and zeal comes through the prose in a way that can be immediately felt by the reader. Now, of course, I shoot for that in every story I write, but with “Night Games” I think I was more successful than I usually am (with one or two exceptions).

Where the idea came from for this short story is actually pretty interesting. I mean, usually where ideas come from isn’t. They just kind of pop into your brain from god knows where, but this time I have a clear memory of how the idea formed because it’s based on a real event. Here’s what happened. Back in 2010 the Chicago Cubs had a player named Tyler Colvin. He could play a number of positions and swing the bat with some pop, and was what some folks might call a super-utility guy. Well, one fateful day in September of 2010, Colvin was in a game against the Florida Marlins and standing on third base. His teammate, Wellington Castillo, was at the plate, so Colvin gets his lead, and Castillo smacks a double. Unfortunately, the incredibly dense maple bat Castillo was using shattered, and as Colvin was coming home from third base, a splinter of that bat impaled his chest, missing his heart by inches. Colvin was hospitalized, but made a full recovery, and played another four seasons in the big leagues.

Now, what does all that have to do with the story I wrote. Well, as soon as I heard and read about Tyler Colvin’s injury, my horror-writer mind went into overdrive. I had this crystal clear image of a vampire staked with a baseball bat. That concept rattled around in my brain for a couple of years until I finally came up with a story idea to build around it in 2013. I wrote the story, polished it up, and sent it out. It was first published in 2014 by an online zine called Devilfish Review, which, sadly, now appears to be defunct. Then I got brave and sent it in as a reprint to Pseudopod, and in a shocking turn of events, they liked it and accepted it. Pseudopod published an audio version of the story in 2016, and in 2018 “Night Games” was voted as one of the recommended storie for new listeners. That was quite the honor.

Anyway, that the story of “Night Games.” So do me a favor, head on out to Pseudopod when you have a minute, and listen to the story. You can even tell me what you think in the comments.

If you’d like to check out the past installments of Aeryn’s Archives, covering some of my publications in gaming and fiction, look here: