04.04.2008
So I woke up feeling, you know... blah. My mind was fuzzy and I don't think I had a sentient thought all morning. It was one of those days where I was acting completely on automatic. It's a mixture of being a little bit depressed and a little bit lazy and a little bit, "who gives a shit?"
You know the kind of day.
Anyway, I hauled my ass out of bed, printed out Matriarchy and Environments and then went down to the post office to mail the former to Asimov's and the latter to Fantasy & Science Fiction. This is the first submission for Matriarchy but since I sent it to Asimov's, I fully expect to receive its head back in a self addressed stamped envelope.
So I stop at the deli on the way back, get a sandwich, coffee, and bubbly water, come back upstairs and, lo and behold, I find rejection number forty-three in my email from the fine editor at Clarkesworld for Dutch. This is the second rejection for this baby after eighty-three days.
The editor had several insightful thoughts on it, to wit:
Thanks, but it's not for us. We found the jokey tone didn't rise to the level of actually being funny, and often ended up awkwardly colliding with information meant for the reader, which is always a distraction.
He included the following as an example of the above.
"You still mad about last time," The Kid asked, stuffing his hands into his pockets.
"You mean last time when you nearly shorted out the entire life support system because you didn't provide a ground," Raj asked, taking his circuit board over to a workbench stacked with a random assortment of other computer parts. "Or do you mean the last time when you 'accidentally' reversed the larboard IFG polarity and almost killed us all from inertial force?"
To which he added in his comments:
People speak in shorthand, even when they're making jokes. This is much more complete information than a normal person would provide, and it takes us right out of the story.
Too true. Too true. In fact, my buddy Mark told me something along the lines of, "When I read the story, it was like, story, story, more story, insert techno-bullshit here, story, story..."
So I'm not entirely surprised by this reaction. In fact, the only thing I find surprising is that this was his biggest problem with it. He has such a mastery of storytelling himself, I'm surprised he didn't just pan the whole damn thing as a piece of shit. I'm not saying that it is a piece of shit, I'm just saying....
Look, you won't read something like this here that often but I really respect this guy's work. So to get something like this is really cool for me. And I can't help but to agree.
So... I guess my question is, what do I do with it now? I can fix the above quote and go looking through it for more but I'm a little unsure of the story its self. As I said, not because I think it's crap. But it's a warm up story for the character of Stewart Todd "Dutch" Warner who plays a larger part later on.
To explain why I'm unsure, let me explain the larger picture here.
I've written some eighteen stories set in the period of colonization for this "world" that I've created. Each story attempts to capture an aspect of this period until it builds to a final with the colonized worlds declaring independence and fighting a war over it.
Now... it wasn't always the idea to get these stories published. They began as a series I was writing merely to find places where I felt the history wasn't flushed out well enough. They were also supposed to be a kind of warm up so I could find a story about which to write a novel. When I saw that magazines were paying for sci-fi stories I thought, "What the fuck? Why not submit?" And that's how I got into this whole game.
Ideally - and this should show how grounded in reality I am - I would like to see all eighteen stories, and maybe the few more that might follow, bundled together chronologically and sold as one collection because that way they all provide context to one another. And because they're all told on a time line, they have taken on a super-arc of their own.
Anyway... unless I manage to get them published though, the chances of that - I've come to realize - is slim to none.
So there we have it.
So... for the score cards I know all of you are keeping, this is rejection number forty-three. Rejection number nine for the year. This is the second rejection from Clarkesworld and the second rejection for Dutch. I've made twelve submissions this year and a total of forty-seven since I started this damn thing. I have four stories currently out, one of which should be coming in any day now... so... yeah.
And that's it. So... all right, kids. Take it easy.