Path to Publication: The Downer

Time for another path to publication, wherein I recount the long and painful journey of a story from creation to that vaunted state of publication. This time, we’ll be looking at “The Downer”, a spec-fic piece that I thought was an absolute slam dunk when I finished it and turned out to be a two-year, sixteen-submission death march that had me questioning my talent, my submissions targeting skills, and even my sanity by the end. Before we get into all the rejections and whatnot, let me tell you a little bit about the story.

Back in early 2020, I was vacationing in Hawaii, and one night I had a very vivid dream about a young woman who generated a kind of misfortune field, so that everyone who spent too much time around her would eventually suffer some kind of terrible accident. Now, I don’t generally dream that vividly, and even when I do, my dreams are a bunch of jumbled nonsense that are basically just manifestation of the brain weasels that chew on my gray matter every day. This time, however, I woke knowing I had a hell of a story idea, so I jotted down some notes, and when I got back home, I started writing. I decided to write the story as an epistolary, a decision that would later haunt me during the submission process. At the time, writing a story that was essentially a written job interview for the FBI seemed like the perfect fit for the character and the idea, but as you’ll see, it might have worked against me.

So, let’s dive into the submission data. I’m going to name each of the markets I submitted this work to just as a matter of record, but, please, do not misread that as me taking any of these publishers to task for not accepting the story. My intention here is not to point out publishers who “missed out” on my brilliant work (hah!); it’s simply to showcase how difficult it is sometimes to get a story published. Remember, it’s all about the right fit, and sometimes finding that fit can, well, give you fits (sorry).

 

Submission	Market	Date Sent	Days Out	Result
1	The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (F&SF)	1/31/20	1	Rejection (Personal)
2	Escape Pod	4/1/20	6	Rejection (Personal)
3	Clarkesworld: Science Fiction & Fantasy Magazine	4/7/20	8	Rejection (Form)
4	Asimov’s Science Fiction	4/15/20	1	Rejection (Form)
5	The Dark Magazine	4/16/20	0	Rejection (Form)
6	Cossmass Infinities	4/17/20	95	Rejection (Form)
7	Strange Horizons	7/21/20	63	Rejection (Form)
8	Apex	9/22/20	76	Rejection (Form, Shortlisted)
9	Diabolical Plots	1/1/21	3	Rejection (Form)
10	Black Static	1/4/21	1	Rejection (Form)
11	Lightspeed Magazine	2/8/21	31	Rejection (Form)
12	Pulp Literature	3/11/21	41	Rejection (Form)
13	Lamplight	3/16/21	28	Rejection (Form)
14	Uncharted Magazine	4/18/21	52	Rejection (Form)
15	Boneyard Soup Magazine	6/9/21	115	Rejection (Form)
16	On Spec	9/26/21	126	Accepted

 

As you can see, “The Downer” was definitely put through its paces in the submission process, and though I ended up selling it to a damn good market, getting there was trying at times. Now, some of this is simply luck of the draw. Had On Spec been open to submissions earlier than it was, I might have submitted it there far sooner than I did, and, who knows, maybe I would have saved myself ten rejections or so. Of course, that’s just part of the whole process. You have to put the right story in front of the right editor at the right time. Sometimes you do that on the first submissions and sometimes you do it on the sixteenth.

I think there were maybe a couple of other things working against this story as well. One, like many of my pieces, it’s kind of a mishmash of horror, fantasy, and science fiction, and doesn’t fit neatly into any of those genres. That can make it somewhat hard to sell to markets that specialize in one genre or the other. The fact I sold it to a general spec-fic market kind of supports this theory, but it’s still mostly conjecture, though it’s something I’ve long suspected about certain pieces of mine.

I think what really held the story back, though, is something for which I do have some concrete data. The fact that it’s an epistolary very likely hurt its chances somewhat. I’ll offer up two pieces of evidence for that theory. The first come from the rejection I received from F&SF.

---

Thank you for giving me a chance to read “The Downer.” I thought this was an interesting character and premise, but the narrative did not persuade me that the epistolary format was the best way to tell/show this story at this length. (I see the appeal of the epistolary format here, particularly in setting up the narrative arc for the turn/reveal at the end; it just didn’t work for me. Part of that may be that I’ve answered mail for a number of high level executives, including a CEO and an executive vice president, and I pretty much answer mail all day now, and nobody who reads mail for someone important or for themselves would get to page 2 of this without skimming and putting it aside: so it might be me more than the story.) I’m going to pass on this story for Fantasy & Science Fiction, but I wish you best of luck finding the right market for it and hope that you’ll keep us in mind in the future.

In the meantime, we all hope you are doing well and staying healthy.

Best regards,

Charlie

---

It’s always great to get a personal note and some feedback from an editor as great as C.C. Finlay, and he makes an excellent point about the story, especially given his personal experience. Note, I don’t think that Charlie is prejudiced against epistolary stories in general, just that the format didn’t work for him here, and I appreciated that he explained why it didn’t. Unfortunately, I had a 5,000-word epistolary story already written, and since this was the story’s first rejection, I decided to soldier on, and keep submitting it as is. With hindsight being 20/20, and knowing that this would be the first of fourteen rejections, I think there’s an argument to be made that I should have taken the idea and character, which did work, scrapped the story, and rewritten it in a standard third-person limited POV or something of that nature.

Now, as for the other piece of evidence that the epistolary format might have hurt this story, well, it comes from an unexpected place, a rejection for another story from On Spec, the same market that accepted “The Downer.” When you get a close-but-no-cigar rejection from On Spec, they, like many publishers, will include some of the first reader feedback. Well, the rejected story was also an epistolary tale, and two of their readers expressed an issue with the format, one even saying that “we don’t generally like [epistolary] tales”. Now, obviously, I did manage to sell On Spec an epistolary story, so those readers obviously thought it was good enough despite the format. Again, let me stress that I have no animosity or resentment toward ANY editor or reader that rejected this story or any other for any reason. Editorial (or first reader) taste is a thing, and it can often be the difference between an acceptance and a rejection.

Now, did any of the markets pass on “The Downer” because it was an epistolary? Maybe. They might have had similar objections to those of C. C. Finlay, and simply felt that the format was the wrong one for this story but not the wrong format for any story. I’ll never know, and I am, of course, engaging in a bit of rejectomancy here, but, hey, it IS the name of the blog. 🙂

Anyway, I sold “The Downer” to On Spec on January 30th, 2022, and it was published in issue #123. It was my second sale to On Spec. They’ve also published another one of my oft-rejected stories, “The Back-Off” (bless them), another double-digit rejectee that will likely be the subject of a future path to publication post.

---

And there you have it, another arduous tale of submissions, rejections, and eventual acceptance triumph. Questions about the piece and it’s twisting path to publication? Or, do you have a tale of your own about an oft-rejected story that eventually found a home? I’d love to hear about either in the comments.