Blurred Line

I've sent out "Between Eternities" hoping to get it reprinted, which means that I've got two different out in submission land right now. Geez, when was the last time that happened? 2006? Anyhow, I'm slowly cobbling together an outline for the last entry in what has become a little bit of a short story trilogy. "Spam" takes place over roughly the same time period as "Between Eternities" but focuses on different characters and this next story will focus on one of the background characters in "Spam" after the events of both stories.

Also requested another full manuscript over at Apodis. At the query stage I get the first ten pages of the novel and when something shows potential, I ask for the full manuscript. So far, I've gotten five. Taking into the total number of queries I've received, that puts my "request for full" rate at about 3% (and, of course, so far I've only actually accepted one of the manuscripts that I requested). A little something to think about when you're submitting your next piece of writing.

Keyword of the day: Someone came to the blog having looked up "death of the short story" and stumbled upon my post from 2005 on that very topic. The notion I put forward of the form dying out, I think, was entirely naive. The short story won't die out. The short story market, however...well, let's face it, the short story market has always been made up of writers and/or academics. As for genre fiction, there are only a few markets that manage to draw in those who aren't writers themselves, which isn't necessarily a bad state. I mean, there's only so many top notch stories to go around. No, the short story isn't dying out -- I think the mistake I made in putting forward that notion was that it was ever a massively profitable/popular form in the first place. That said, short stories rock. And Jason Stoddard, one of my favourite SF short story writers from the last couple of years, has a new story up at Futurismic, one of my favourite short story markets. Go read.


Profile Editor. Writer. 9-5er. Lord of the Dance. Blurredline.com Apodis Publishing Fusion Fragment cterrill(at)blurredline.com Buy Goodbye, Darwin Amazon.com Amazon.ca Chapters.ca Barnes&Noble.com Read it free in PDF Format Buy Blurred Line Amazon.com Amazon.ca Chapters.ca Barnes&Noble.com Read it free in PDF Format The Short Stuff "Learning Magic From Mint" - published May 2007 in Atomjack "Between Eternities" - published October 2005 at Speculative.ca "Smoke and Mirrors" - published June 2005 in Byzarium Submissions Log Total Subs: 25 Acceptances: 3 Rejections: 17 Withdrawals: 3 Subs Out: 2 Quality Blogs Scalzi's Whatever Dave's Blogography Bookslut The Struggling Writer SF Signal the0phrastus Paperback Writer Scribe's Writing Desk Nathan Bransford Lyons Literary LLC The World in the Satin Bag Book In The Oven The Word Perhaps We Learned Something... Words, etc. Archives March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 Et Cetera Cavan @ Last.fm Cavan @ LibraryThing Feeds Atom Feed RSS Feed	Saturday, December 06, 2008 - Submissions; Further submissions; Ruminations on the death of the short story I've sent out "Between Eternities" hoping to get it reprinted, which means that I've got two different out in submission land right now. Geez, when was the last time that happened? 2006? Anyhow, I'm slowly cobbling together an outline for the last entry in what has become a little bit of a short story trilogy. "Spam" takes place over roughly the same time period as "Between Eternities" but focuses on different characters and this next story will focus on one of the background characters in "Spam" after the events of both stories. Also requested another full manuscript over at Apodis. At the query stage I get the first ten pages of the novel and when something shows potential, I ask for the full manuscript. So far, I've gotten five. Taking into the total number of queries I've received, that puts my "request for full" rate at about 3% (and, of course, so far I've only actually accepted one of the manuscripts that I requested). A little something to think about when you're submitting your next piece of writing. Keyword of the day: Someone came to the blog having looked up "death of the short story" and stumbled upon my post from 2005 on that very topic. The notion I put forward of the form dying out, I think, was entirely naive. The short story won't die out. The short story market, however...well, let's face it, the short story market has always been made up of writers and/or academics. As for genre fiction, there are only a few markets that manage to draw in those who aren't writers themselves, which isn't necessarily a bad state. I mean, there's only so many top notch stories to go around. No, the short story isn't dying out -- I think the mistake I made in putting forward that notion was that it was ever a massively profitable/popular form in the first place. That said, short stories rock. And Jason Stoddard, one of my favourite SF short story writers from the last couple of years, has a new story up at Futurismic, one of my favourite short story markets. Go read. Cavan blogged at 7:59 PM \| 1 comments	Progress Zilch! 0/0 Listening A.J. Croce - "Maybe I'm Amazed" My Music Reading Bright Lights, Big City - Jay McInerney My Library Watching Black Book: B Sweet and Lowdown: C Breakfast on Pluto: B Wishlist Bridge of Sighs - Richard Russo Rachael Yamagata - Elephants...Teeth Sinking Into Heart