EDITOR IN OZ: May be human, only behind curtain

When I attended the Dublin Phoenix Convention as a guest last year, I met John Kenny, co-editor of Albedo One magazine. During the convention he solicited a story from me, which I then wrote for the Aeon Press anthology he edited, entitled Box of Delights.  Because I had a good experience with him as an editor, I started following the blog he recently began.  And he recently wrote a good blog article on submission strategies for writers.

It stood out to me for a number of reasons, one is likely because I find myself in a rather new situation as a long-time submitting writer: I have a number of new stories, and all of them are thirty-to-forty pages long.  Most magazines no longer accept story submissions of such length, and those who do typically cut off at 10,000 words. The few remaining either charge a $3 "reading fee" to submit or don't seem really that interested in reading long stories to begin with.

Of course, what writer with half a thought in her head would decide to write long stories ("novelettes", suggests Duotrope) at the very moment everyone else has decided that a story the size of a dead leaf is best?

Image of Writer Submitting Stories Pre-Ebook

Needless to say, I've been spending some additional hours thinking about submissions and, in many ways, feel like I'm re-experiencing what it was to send out my stories when I was 15.  Except it's not as exciting, the dazzle is gone, I don't save all my rejections in a jean purse, and online form rejection letters are--as I'm noticing--often made to seem like they're not form letters, which makes the task of submitting (and managing them) all the more frustrating.

In the good old days, the rejection form, and its variants, implied a certain code to the writer based on how it was written and signed.  Little differently, I would assume, than how a writer's cover letter--its formatting, tone, and content--will say something to the editor about the professionalism, or lack thereof, of the writer.

But in regards to the code of rejection letters: A rejection addressed to "Dear Writer" and signed with a photocopied editor's signature (or simply "The Editors") meant that the story didn't merit more than this.  It was just another story, and so the writer would know something about what just happened and how to think about re-submitting.  The same rejection letter but with a real signature above the photocopied one meant the editor was sending a sort of compliment.  It was a rejection but the editor took the time because of this particular story.  And so that would tell the writer something.  Thus, a handwritten P.S. on an otherwise form rejection was really something.  This is what was meant by "I got a good rejection."

But many magazines are emailing form rejection letters (equal to a photocopied Dear Writer form rejection) but making them look personal.  And while I'll save my deeper thoughts on pseudo-personal form rejections for another day, perhaps you can see why automated online rejections that fill the writer's first name into the "Dear" field and the story's title in the Thanks for submitting your story ___________ can be a bit confusing:

'The Floating Order Feels Significant'

Women: A Cultural Review recently published a review by John Regan, a Cambridge graduate and lecturer at University College Dublin.  His review, "More Than Women and Cats", regards two collections from Two Ravens Press: Regi Claire's Fighting It and Erin Pringle's The Floating Order.

In an overall positive review, about The Floating Order, Regan at one point calls Pringle "a master of tragicomedy" and later writes:

"Just as her stories thrive on a kind of profitable restlessness, The Floating Order feels significant by virtue of its narrative, structural and thematic variety."

Quite nice, quite nice.

Obviously, Dr. Regan has excellent taste.  Cheers!  

International Ghost Story Contest 2012

 The Dr. Euguene Clark Library in Lockhart, Texas has announced its fourth annual ghost story contest, Scare the Dickens Out of Us!

Word count: 5,000 or less

Who?: Anyone (adult and junior divisions)

Entry fee: Adult division $20; Junior division $5

The money is used to benefit the library.

First prize: $1000.00 and a trophy

Second prize: $500.00 and a ribbon 

Third prize: $250.00 and a ribbon

Junior contest prize $250.00 and a trophy

Entries will be accepted only between July 1, 2012 and October 1, 2012 (postmark dates).

For more information, formatting guidelines, and a list of previous winners, visit the library's website (www.clarklibraryfriends.com).


To qualify, stories should be of the ghost-story genre.  

Read This Book: Space, in Chains by Laura Kasischke

Her husband brought this book home from the magical place where most all the books in their house have come from--the best ones that move from bookcase to bookcase, the ones carried most and that, most often, while she and he sleep, seemingly try to slip out the door--again and again and so they must be pinned down with little notes in the margins, dark lines under their feet.

Space, in Chains is a collection of 72 poems by Laura Kasishke, whom she hadn't read or heard of until now and now she thinks is one of the most brilliant writers moving among us.

From the publisher: Space, in Chains speaks in ghostly voices, fractured narratives, songs, prayers, and dark riddles as it moves through contemporary tragedies of grief and the complex succession of generations. [. . .] Kasischke has pared the construction of her verse to its bones, leaving haunting language and a visceral strangeness of imagery.

This is one of those breathless reviews, the kind where she doesn't want to, or cannot yet, explain why this book is good, why we must read it, why the writer shows her skill--her genius here, here, and here, too.

Ho! Ho! Oh! The Floating Order Available on the Kindle

Click to Preview 
on Amazon.com

Two Ravens Press has recently released a Kindle Edition of her short-story collection The Floating Order.

Retailing at $7.99, the Kindle Edition is half the price of the print version.  A short preview of is available as well.

Merry reading!

Man Types a Painting

Image of Chromatic Typewriter
 built by Tyree Callahan

A man has typed a painting.  To do this, he had to rebuilt a typewriter.  It's a lovely idea, she thinks, especially because the image below is pretty representative of how she imagines her writing process as she's inside it: the page as she writes, just before the ink dries from clouds into letters.

It's a lovely idea.  

Read the interview with the man over at GizMag.com and view his non-typed paintings at his website.