One of my poems was recently accepted by a great semi-annual literary journal – Foliate Oak Literary Magazine. Their September issue is now online and you can check it out.
My poem, Culley’s Pub: An Elegy, is about a bar I went to all the time in college. It closed down shortly after I graduated.
Leave a CommentDespite my literary fame and bestseller rankings exceeding 50 copies sold, I still make time to submit my shorter works to literary journals the old-fashioned way, including my poetry and short stories. Well, to a certain extent. There are still some journals that are SO old-fashioned with the way they do business I won’t even bother. This includes:
Last week I had a poem get accepted by a literary journal. I’m always excited and thankful when a journal accepts my work, despite the fact that none of them pay anymore, but I always lament having to withdraw my work from consideration from every other publication I sent it to. For this particular poem, I only had five other journals to inform, and this was how it all played out.
Compared to the last time I had to inform a bunch of journals that a work of mine was accepted elsewhere, this was much easier. Why? For one, I only submitted electronically, so there was a digital paper trail I could follow just by searching my email and logging in to my submission manager. For another, most of my submissions were done through an electronic submission manager (the costs of which some journals are defraying by passing the cost on to their submitters – see above) so withdrawing from submission was as easy as clicking a button.
Oh, and the number of times I submitted this poem to other journals before it was accepted? 19, as best as I can tell.
Keep your eyes peeled for my poem Culley’s Pub: An Elegy to appear in the next issue of Foliate Oak Literary Journal – whenever that may be.
Leave a CommentLoyal fanbase, you are, I’m sure, already aware of the fact that it took me seven years from the time I wrote my first word of The Redheaded Stepchild until I published it. What was I doing in that time besides getting divorced and attending wine and cheese parties for one? I was querying publishers and agents, building up an impressive collection of rejection letters, which I often used to line the litter box back when I could stand cats. I had my copy of The Writer’s Market and I was going to go through every entry in the book until I found that rare Prince Charming gem all writers hope for: the right publisher for my book, and one who was willing to take a chance on me.
Five years from the time I wrote the first word, I finally got an email from an acquisitions editor at a publishing house, while playing pool and drinking beer in a dive bar on a visit to my hometown. My book was in the batch they were going to accept during their next publication period. I probably played my best lifetime game of pool that night, because I was over the moon, thinking I’d finally gotten the big break I deserved. I won’t say who it was – because as you can tell from the title of this post, I turned them down anyway…
The happiness ended the minute I started digging deeper into the company and I got the contract. For the most part, it was pretty standard for what I read in the reference book, except for the following teensy line items:
Um, yeah… that was the red flag for this redhead. When I told them I was uncomfortable with this, they sent me a list of their author references as a way of reassuring me that I would be happy, successful, and quickly earn back my “refundable deposit” if I took the deal. I read all the references, but then I went and found the authors’ websites. Most of them had long since given up on their books from this publisher or hadn’t published any more books, but there were a few still kicking around, so I contacted them. They all told me the same thing… it was not the greatest decision they’d ever made in their lives.
But still, this was a book deal, a real one, the thing I had been waiting for for five years of my life. Who was I to say it wasn’t good enough? I’m a nobody, and they want to take a chance on me. I did what any girl would do – I called someone smarter than me. Specifically, my most-likely-to-succeed counterpart from high school (or would have been, if I’d been popular enough to even make that section of the yearbook’s radar), a lawyer pal with a lot of contracts experience. No, he’d never seen a book deal contract, but a contract’s a contract, right? And yeah, he said it sucked. He wasn’t going to tell me what to do, but he didn’t mince words about the drawbacks of the contract. He was even kind enough to draw up a list of suggested revisions, reminding me than any contract is just a starting off point for negotiations, and that if I really wanted a book deal, I should fight for one that worked for both me and the publisher.
Well, negotiation must’ve been Swahili to them. I emailed my carefully crafted list of negotiable revisions to their people. And waited a week. And emailed them back, asking if they’d had a chance to view my revisions, to which they assured me their legal team was giving it “careful consideration.” Then I waited another week. And emailed again. Finally, they came back and said they weren’t willing to make any concessions with their standard contract (gee thanks… you coulda just told me that 2 weeks ago). I wanted a book deal. I really did. But this one smelled an awful lot like the rejection letters after the litter box got a hold of em, so I politely declined, determined that I had not yet found my Prince Charming of publishing. And had another wine and cheese party for one.
But… that’s not the end of the story… tune in next week, when I tell the story of “Why I Self-Published.”
Leave a CommentWell, it would seem my second published short story is going to be in the same publication as my first published short story. No skin off my back; I’m just glad it’s being accepted anywhere. This will be the third issue of Line Zero, and the first publication of The Pollen Bath. Getting something published is always happy news, but it also comes with the unhappy task of contacting every single publication where I sent it for consideration and notifying them, some of which get all pissy about it. Funny enough, I had a pollen bath on my car yesterday and the air made my eyes catch on fire.
Still, it can’t compare to seeing your name in print…
1 CommentToday my flash fiction piece Are You There, Wall? It’s Me, Kerri is featured on the Rose City Sisters online flash fiction anthology today. If you’ve got 5 minutes, go check it out!
http://rosecitysisters.blogspot.com/2011/02/58-are-you-there-wall-its-me-kerri.html
Leave a CommentThe week between Christmas and New Year’s is always a time of annual reflection for me, and as I was reflecting on the year that was 2010, I realized how much of a success it has been, and here’s why:
So, I would say that on a semi-professional writer’s level, the year was a wild success. But I have to keep getting better. Since resolutions are just imaginary, unattainable pipe dreams, I set yearly goals instead of New Year’s Resolutions. Here are my writer’s goals for 2010:
I think this is a good set of attainable goals, and I look forward to all that 2011 will bring.
Leave a CommentA few weeks ago, a poem I submitted way back when to an independent online magazine was selected for their “Best of the Year” collection. I found out about this site last year when I was at South by Southwest. It’s a collaborative content site that posts new submissions of art, literature, poetry, and other random stuff every hour. I submitted two poems to them in the last year, and they accepted both of them, and now both of them have been featured in their “Best of the First Year” collection!
You can check it out here:
http://w5ran.com/2010/12/best-of-the-first-year-to-a-moth/
http://w5ran.com/2010/11/best-of-the-first-year-things-in-my-stuff-drawer/
I must be New Years resolved to write more stuff in 2011!
Leave a CommentDo you ever start at one place on the internet and end up on a completely different place, with only vague recollection of how you got there?
Today, I was late at work waiting for some other people to provide some stuff for me, so while I was waiting, I decided to catch up on some Google reader. As much as I try to stay up on what’s going on in the industry, it’s really tough, and I often fail. Still, there are a few choice sites that I like to make sure I’m always up on. One of them is midlist thriller writer J.A. Konrath’s blog – A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing. I rarely read an entire post end-to-end, because they are often long and I am lazy, but I was entranced by this one. If you’ve dealt with anyone offering you a book deal, which I have and to this day am SO glad I declined, even though I am a nobody, take 5 minutes and read this post. It’s a lot of fun.
After I read the entire post, I did something else I almost never do – I left a comment, and took some time to read some of the other comments. I typically avoid these because I get overly emotionally involved in comment arguments between strangers hiding behind the safety net of anonymity the internet affords and my temper starts flaring. These things never matter, so it’s usually just best I leave them alone. I once read 3 pages worth of comments on an article about Uggs. People have some seriously strong pro-Ugg and con-Ugg opinions. Despite my general avoidance of comment spaces, I decided to troll the comments on this post for A) other writers and industry professionals I can follow on Twitter and B) to see what the response was on this very flagrant post.
One of the comments left was this:
Hi — love the post! I’m an author and I run a small independent publishing company (Bucks County Publishing) and we are primarily involved in paperbacks but we do eBooks too… it is a side thing really because the overhead is so little to do it. We price all of our full length eBook novels at $2.99 and anything shorter is $1.99. Simple pricing. It is ridiculous that these publishing companies want to gauge the customer OR kill the medium…. or both.
I, too, am an author, and I love small independent publishing companies. So I decided to check out their site, and see if they were accepting submissions, because I am a predatory author. As it turns out, they are, and as far as I can tell, it would be a really really good fit for me and my work. Then again, I’ve thought that about lots of book publishers I’ve submitted to who have summarily rejected me. Still, what luck to just find this by link-jumping on the internets. Then, I got to thinking about other neat things I’ve stumbled upon by random internet jumping…
Line Zero: I heard about this new print journal on Twitter. They were looking for submissions for their first issue, I submitted, and I got accepted. Really, I just lucky at the right time with the right journal.
LinkedIn is notorious for sending me down these weird internet paths. Somehow I got from a friend’s LinkedIn page to Smashwords, and that’s how I found out about them. I am still evaluating whether I want to take the ebook self-pub route, but if and when I do, this will be how I do it.
Rose City Sisters: Another Twitter find. The site editor started following me on Twitter, put out the call for submissions, I threw a flash fiction thing together, and decided it would be a good venue for getting some flash fiction practice under my belt. They’ve posted 2 of my stories since.
The volunteer thing I didn’t get: Another stumbly motion on Twitter.
Oh, and I guess I should mention that I found J.A. Konrath’s blog when I was doing some research for a post on this site regarding my distaste for SASEs.
So, if we’re counting, three of my publications came from internet-winding, even if they’re on independent sites and journals. If the Bucks County Publishing people publish me, that’ll make four. Not too bad for just messing around on the internet and finding the right opportunities at opportune moments. Maybe I should just set aside an hour a week for internet “creative space.”
Leave a CommentI got my first short story accepted for publication, which is super fantastic, but always comes with the horrible chore of withdrawing the manuscript from everywhere else you sent it that hasn’t rejected it yet. The first time I found out a poem of mine was getting published, I was completely overwhelmed by how much work it was to complete this chore, and how rude some of the publications were. Last time around, I got some interesting responses, including the following:
This time around, I was much more prepared. I made sure I read the fine print over again for everyone I sent to, to make sure I hadn’t been violating their rules in the first place. I also prepared an email template, so I wouldn’t have to think about what to write every time. So I was both mentally and resourcefully prepared. These are my findings from this round of submission withdrawal:
Lesson learned: keep good track of your submissions, and be prepared when you get lucky and one of them picks it up.
1 CommentToday was a roller coaster day in the world of my writing. I had a poem get picked up W5RAn, and got some good positive feedback. It’s always a good feeling when I write something, think it’s okay, then come back to it and think, “Man, that’s really good!” Dramatic distance really is a very difficult thing to achieve.
Then later in the day I heard back about a volunteer job I applied for. It was a slush reader position at a new online magazine for young adult science fiction/fantasy. I didn’t get the job.
I heard it about by chance, on Twitter, after I wrote a post about the latest piece I’ve been working on, which is kind of a magical realism, mock-sci-fi piece. I decided to follow the #sff tag I included and happened upon a tweet about the position. I followed the link and read up on what they were looking for.
That was pretty much it. I was immediately interested, because it would be a great resume builder, and it’s always satisfying to support new literary ventures. I grabbed my Moleskine and thought of all the ways I would be perfect for the job. I love to read, I am very familiar with the submission process, I am willing to volunteer, I write concise reports for a living, I’ve judged lots and lots of writing contests, etc. I even threw in some zingers – said I’d be willing to represent the magazine at SXSW 11, talked about my bachelor’s degree in fiction writing, discussed my copy editing experience in college, blah blah blah. Maybe I’m just an optimist, but I seriously thought I would be a shoe-in. The editor also followed me on Twitter the day after I applied, so I thought I had it in the bag. I was really looking forward to it – a great resume builder and a good way to give back. Yeah, I’d probably have to read a lot of crap, but then I’d probably also get a taste for how people feel when they read my submissions and could improve accordingly.
So I was really disappointed when I got the all-too-familiar “not what we’re looking for at this time” email. Not even a “we were seriously interested in you” email. Just a standard old “dear author”. I mean, I did see that they had a higher level of interest than they expected, but I didn’t anticipate that a world of skilled people just willing to give up some time would be applying. It kind of makes me wonder what level of people were vying for this unpaid position. I’ve been pretty well desensitized to submission rejections, but this one hit me like a whack to the head. Okay, so sci-fi/fantasy isn’t my favorite genre ever, which I was up front about, but I enjoy writing of all kinds, even SFF. I figure they must have just had some really really impressive people apply, or this is a blatant case of Kellyism.
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