Here’s my rejection from the Black Warrior Review:

As you can see, there’s something missing. They forgot to put the rejection letter in. I don’t know if it’s a disappoint not to see the rejection slip or a relief. I’m going to go with relief.

I really like this rejection letter. Mostly because of the little bear insignia holding a lamps. I never heard of Five Points before I submitted my story, but now I really want to get in! I’m about bears. And I’m all about lamps. If you know anything about me, that’s what you know.

On the a side note, I’m starting to think the problem could be the title. “Tesseract Fuckfest,” just doesn’t seem to be drawing in the editors.

I’ve had this rejection for a while, but I haven’t had time to scan it until now. The old “Thanks for Failing,” always a pick me up. A two second hand written response really brightens up a relatively lackluster form letter by Shenandoah. This goes into the “It just feels good to be nominated” category… well, I have to imagine it feels even better to win.

If you haven’t heard of On the Premises, you’re not the only one. It’s a small, literary ezine, and what I thought was a pretty good shot of getting a story out there. Here’s what their Writer’s Guideline says: On The Premises aims to promote newer and/or relatively unknown writers who can write…

So, “newer and/or relatively unknown” that sounds a lot like me, “who can write,” that’s questionable, but could be me. But as you can see it was not me the magazine was talking about. They really managed to rub it with this form letter though. Let’s look beyond the fact that the didn’t even take the time cut and paste my name (Real magazines take the time to do this, but OTP can’t take the time). The thing that really got me was listing “We received 232 entries.” That’s just kicking a man when he’s down. They’re telling me I couldn’t noticed in a crowd of no one. 232 is nothing! If you can’t get yourself noticed in that small a talent pool then you might as well just hang it up.

Then I remembered the crappy story I sent them – a tale of love and lunch ladies. “My Dorris, My Love, My Lunch Lady,” not my finest work. Of course, that’s why I sent it to On The Premise and not The New Yorker. In my arrogance, I figured they would love my table scraps. Also, the way this ezine works is they give you a premises and all the stories in that issue fit the premises, thus the name. This issue’s premises was “One or more characters encounter something, someone, or some place for the first time, either by chance or design.” The story is kind of about first love, but it’s a little bit of stretch.

A bad story that doesn’t fit the premises, but still the rejection smarts.

Here’s the my latest rejection for “Four Dimensional Love (Tesseract Fuckfest).” A pretty standard form letter from the Virginia Quarterly Review. Perhaps it’s the name? But I get a kick out of Tesseract Fuckfest, it’s just funny to say, funny to picture, and I think it’s cute to name a story. Is it too cutsie? I don’t know, maybe, I’m the only one who appreciates when 4D objects get super sloppy.

Got this form letter from The Pedestal Magazine. All and all a nice form letter, it almost looks personal. It was the “enjoying” part. I read that and thought, well, that is something who read the story would say.

Currently reading: What is the What by Dave Eggers

Here’s my rejection from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. It’s a personal rejection letter, but F&SF always gives personal rejection letters so that’s not a terribly big deal. It is from the Editor in Chief, Gordon Van Gelder, and not some anonymous reader or junior editor, so maybe that’s a good thing or maybe he just happened to pick it up. My favorite parts, of course, are “story is ambitious” and “some interesting passages.” Which means the story is a failure, but an ambitious failure, and while there were a few well written sections they didn’t out weigh the poorly written passages surrounding them. A pretty good rejection, but my biggest problem is, I just don’t know where the story is going to go to now.