Submission Statement: October 2021
October is no more. Let’s dive in.
October 2021 Report Card
- Submissions Sent: 5
- Rejections: 5
- Acceptances: 0
- Publications: 1
- Further Consideration/Shortlist: 1
After sending 18 submissions in September, I slowed down a lot, and only sent 5 in October. Some of that is due to the freelance work I’ve been doing, some of it is a lack of new material (recently remedied), and some of it is plain old burnout. Regardless, I ended the month with 94 total submissions for the year, and I’ve already added three more in November. I’ll hit my goal of 100 submissions easily. October was a hard month because I had expectations, even hope that it would be a good month for submissions. I expected responses from two of the stories I had shortlisted, and they both came back as rejections. All you can do in those situations, though, is send the stories back out in hopes the next time they get shortlisted, it’ll end in an acceptance. I did have another story shortlisted in October, one that had been shortlisted with Diabolical Plots. The fact that’s it’s been shortlisted at another pro market bodes well for the story I think.
Rejections
Just five rejections in September.
- Standard Form Rejections: 3
- Upper-Tier Form Rejections: 0
- Personal Rejections: 2
The two personal rejections were both shortlist/close-but-no-cigar rejections. The toughest thing about a lot of these is they often do not come with any negative feedback. In fact, they generally feature only positive feedback along with a not right for us or doesn’t fit our current needs kind of statement. Now, I believe it when an editor says those things. They can’t publish every story they like, and sometimes it does just come down to a story not fitting the theme of an issue or being too similar to a piece they’ve already accepted an so on. The only thing you can do is send the story back out armed with the knowledge that if one editor liked it, another probably will too.
Publications
One publication in October. My story “Special Order” took third place in The Arcanist’s Camp Arcanist Flash Contest. You can read the story by clicking the image below.
And that was October. How was your month?
Effectively Wild – A Baseball Horror Story
Night Walk & Other Dark Paths
Acts of War: Flashpoint
Acts of War: Aftershock
Acts of War: Stormbreak
Aeryn Rudel's Rejectomancy 