Friday, September 28, 2007

You Can't Win 'Em All, I Guess

The notice:
Thank you for your interest in Philippine Speculative Fiction
Vol.3.


We regret to inform you that we are passing on your story this year. We enjoyed reading your story but had to make hard choices.

We hope to read more from you in the future.

Best,
Dean & Nikki Alfar


The response:
> We enjoyed reading your story but had to make hard
> choices.

Er... surely you didn't enjoy reading it. Even my instincts screamed that my submission this year was terrible. :)

Ah, well... till next year, then. Good luck with the new
anthology.


Regards,
Sean

6 comments:

Dom Cimafranca said...

On to the next deadline, Sean! No time to mope! Write! write! write!

Sean said...

Dominique: I'm not moping. If I had a centavo for every rejection letter I've ever received... I'd have, er, 11 centavos. (And that's not counting the time an editor threw my submission at me.)

Dom Cimafranca said...

Threw your submission back at you? Literally?

You'll have to write about that sometime.

Sean said...

Dominique: Yes, literally. No, I won't tell the story, if only because I understand that he was just having a bad day at the time. But yes, it's weird, isn't it? :)

Anonymous said...

Since it's not going to get published, maybe you can let us read it here then? :)

Sean said...

Ida: I've been a lot more forgiving of the story in the last few days, and I figure that it's still salvageable. As a result, I don't think I can post it up here -- I might end up either reusing or rewriting it.

That said, I've posted an excerpt here. It leaves a lot to the imagination, but at least we get to see what my narration style is like when I have less than 24 hours to come up with a story. :)