Just when I thought it was safe to go back to the novella …

I woke up today and, just before I left for work, the mail arrived. Can you guess where this is going? If you said Rejectionville, you’d be right.

Four rejections in less than a week. It’s not demoralizing or discouraging, just kind of … strange. I sent these four stories out at various times, but the rejections all arrived over a matter of days. I have become convinced that rejection slips must travel in packs, probably because they realize how despised they are. I compared back-to-back rejection to getting kicked in the nuts while you’re lying on the ground. I should have added that said kick is often delivered with the business end of a stiletto heel. A sharp bolt of pain and memories that will last a lifetime.

That aside, this last rejection was actually quite complimentary. I was so – shall we say inspired? sure, why not, this is my website, after all! – that I decided to see if I had any other stories I could send them. It turns out I did not. You see, The Antigonish Review only considers stories of 3,000 words or less.

Normally I would have left it at that and gone on my happy (albeit rejected) way. But while I was reacquainting myself with the Review’s submission guidelines, I happened to notice that they were accepting stories for the Sheldon Currie Fiction Contest. There are cash prizes for the first, second, and third place stories, and the $25 entry fee includes a one-year subscription to the Review.

And wouldn’t you know it, I came up with an idea for a story.

"The Currents"

457 / 3,000 (15.0%)

January’s turned out to be quite the busy month.

• Currently reading: Girlfriend in a Coma, by Douglas Coupland

Looks like I’ll be getting back to "Heroine" sooner than I had originally planned.

Today I was working on "The Fires of Autumn," which was supposed to be the last short story I wrote before taking a few weeks off to focus on finishing my first novella. Well, the story isn’t so short anymore. Yeah, that’s not exactly a new thing for me. Nor is it necessarily a bad thing. Most of my ideas just want to be novels, and this is what happened to "The Fires of Autumn." That will not be the title of the novel, alas. But I do plan to make it my first book, to be written after "Heroine" and before my first grand horror novel, the title of which I will keep to myself for the time being.

Anyway, I begin work on the novella tomorrow.

Stay tuned.

• Currently reading: Girlfriend in a Coma, by Douglas Coupland

Got up early this morning and made the final touches to my new story, "Clean." Then I took a trip down to the post office and mailed it off with the other two stories I mentioned in my last post. If you’d like to see where they’re off to, take a look at the main page of the site for the full rundown.

• Currently reading: "Pit Boy," by Elizabeth Massie

The only worse thing I can imagine than getting two rejection letters in a row is three … and that’s what happened this week. I wasn’t here on Friday to actually get the letter from F&SF, but it was waiting for me upon my return.

No big deal. Every writer must deal with a certain amount of rejection. If it was easy everyone would do it. And this is the process that weeds out the losers and those who aren’t willing to work hard. I don’t believe I fall into either category, so I don’t feel that my continuing to write and submit is the act of someone who is too stupid to know when to quit. Rather I feel that I am going through the trials that most writers go through on the way to success. It’s not easy to be this optimistic all the time, but I try my best.

It’s hard to express emotion across a website, so I should probably state for the record that, three rejections in a row aside, I am neither depressed nor discouraged. I saw Brokeback Mountain last night (very good), and we picked up our car this morning (even better). Kathryn is sitting on the couch, reading "Clean" (she thinks it’s one of my best stories yet), and I expect to have a final draft finished by this evening. Two of the stories rejected this week have already been sent back out to new markets, and I’ll be dropping off the third and fourth (as well as the new one) at the post office tomorrow. That will make five stories out this weekend, bringing my total up to 11.

Business as usual.

• Currently reading: "If Damon Comes," by Charles L. Grant

Rejection has a way of kicking you in the nuts while you’re on the ground. I finally received a response from ON SPEC regarding my story "Winter Hammock" – a rejection, alas. I already found a swanky new market to send it to next. More on that later.

I’m off to Peterborough again tonight. I have all day tomorrow to write, and I plan to get a good portion of "The Fires of Autumn" completed. We’re also picking up our new car, and we’re supposed to go see Brokeback Mountain. Another full weekend, in other words.

• Currently reading: Cell, by Stephen King

Received my first rejection from The Malahat Review. Unfortunately it’s only a form letter, so I’ll spare you the not-so-gory details. When it comes to sending stories out, I tend to get right back on the horse after receiving a rejection and fire it off again. This time I’m going to wait a week or so, until I finish the new story, "The Fires of Autumn."

"The Fires of Autumn"

514 / 5,000 (10.0%)

I also recently noticed on the Cemetery Dance website that any stories sent to them before July 15, 2005 have probably been lost due to some vague postal error. Of course, it turns out "Inheritor" was sent to them on July 5, 2005. I didn’t think anything of the delay since CD tends not to reply in the most expedient manner. So it looks like I’ll have three stories to send off next to week (two to send and one to re-send, that is).

The fun never stops.

• Currently reading: Cell, by Stephen King

I woke up this morning from a horrible nightmare that the Conservatives won last night’s election. On top of that I managed to frig up my neck pulling boxes off the top shelf of my closet. Probably not the smartest thing to do five minutes after one gets out of bed – and I have the muscle pain to prove it.

"Clean"

4,361 / 4,361 (100.0%)

That aside, I was able to finish "Clean" today. (Maybe it was the pain that inspired me; oh shit, I’ve become an artiste!) Now I just need to wait for Kathryn to read it and then I can get to work on the final draft. Until then, I’m going to lie down on the couch with a bag of frozen french fries against my neck and read the new Stephen King novel that came today.

Fifty pages into it, I have to say it is one of the most brutally violent books I’ve read in a long time (especially from King, who, despite his reputation as That Horror Writer, has never really been known as That Gory Writer). And when I say brutally violent, I’m not referring just to the prose. Yes, there’s blood and dismemberment, but that pales in comparison to the atmosphere of violence King manages to pull the reader into almost immediately. I’ve read plenty of violent stories in various small-press horror ‘zines, but what most of those writers don’t seem to realize is that if the reader doesn’t give a damn about the characters, then the violence falls flat on its face. It’s almost like a mathematical equation where the two things cancel each other out.

To me this is the biggest problem with most of the horror stories I read today. The characters are not likeable or interesting, so I get bored and stop reading. Writing graphic scenes of violence doesn’t make one a great horror writer. Writing about a character that you come to care about being put into horrific situations makes one a great horror writer. Anything else is just lazy and masturbatory (which probably explains why the key demographic for small-press horror fiction is males age 18-40).

Sorry to rant. I guess the best way to put the wannabes in their place is to simply ignore them and write my books.

So if you’ll excuse me …

• Currently reading: Cell, by Stephen King

Sweet baby Jesus … I never thought the day would come.

I think I just saw the Devil ice-skating to work.

Am I upset? Does the Tin Man have a sheet-metal dick?

Yeah, I’m a bit perturbed.