03.13.2008
I was out late last night and got home because I have a work conference call to attend... well... probably as soon as I'm done writing this.
Anyway... I checked my email, and guess what? Rejection number thirty-nine is in!
Number thirty-nine, for those of you keeping score at home, is from Strange Horizons. It arrived after 61 days. 61 days is a good long time from Strange Horizons. My little spreadsheet, in which I keep track of these things, tells me that the average for them is about 36 days. So 61 is abnormal.
My theory? They were considering it. They couldn't just reject it out of hand. Someone who read it thought, "Hmmm.... there's something here.... I'm going to bounce it off the other editors and see what they think..."
And why do I think this? Because for the first time I got a personal rejection letter from them. A personal fucking rejection letter! That usually means there was some thought put into it. So... hells yeah, baby!
Here's what they said:
Thank you for submitting "Rebellion" to Strange Horizons, but we've decided not to accept it for publication. I found this fairly compelling and fairly well-written, but I'm afraid I felt the plot was a little too straightforward and the ending a little too anticlimactic.
Yeah? Okay. Fair enough.
Rebellion, for those who are curious, is a little story about a governor appointed by a bureaucracy that the people are having a popular uprising against. It's told from his point of view, in third person, and takes place just after he decides to enforce a new tax collection scheme. The people, of course, say no and he calls in the fleet. The people then deal with the soldiers in, what I think, is a rather novel way.
But anyway...
I guess they were looking for a few more twists and turns within the plot. Unfortunately, I'm just not much of a twists and turns kind of guy.
Oh well.
The fact that I've been submitting to these guys for nearly two years and that this is my first personal rejection is kind of amazing. I feel like I've broken through some kind of wall.
This is my fifth rejection for the year, the average response time being nearly 48 days for each one. So far this year, my stories have sat on editor's desks for 238 days. I still have four stories out, two of which I expect to hear back on any day now and a third which might be responded to this week.
I'll let you know.
Now... pardon me as I go do my sexy chicken dance of hells yeah.