My fiction submission stats for 2009:

50 submissions (all short fiction; three more than 2008)
49 rejections (three more more than 2008)
0 new sales
1 reprint sale (audio)
1 story published

It was yet another trying year, even moreso than 2008. My stories continued to get passed up to editors at pro mags, and they continued to get a lot of “almost” rejections. Exactly like the two last years.

For the first time since I’ve been submitting, I went the whole year without selling a story. Calendar years, of course, are arbitrary demarcations, but that still was quite disappointing.

I did make my first-ever reprint sale, an audio podcast of my Weird Tales story “Excision” to Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine. Which is very cool, and I look forward to hearing their podcast.

My story “Ebb” in Space and Time #107 got two glowing reviews in “mid-list” online SF/F review magazines (here and here), which was extremely cool. But, even though Space and Time is a well-designed magazine with a known name, “Ebb” didn’t garner any other interest and has not yet sold as a (audio) reprint.

Overall, this year was pretty much the same as the last three. My brand of character-driven, secondary-world fantasy isn’t a priority for most all magazines. Editors at major mags have said that my stories are too swords & sorcery for them; editors at S&S mags have said that my stories are too character-centered with endings that are too dark. So I’m caught in between.

But I can’t blame it all on that. I’ve written several stories in other styles, and they’ve gotten the same “almost” rejections. Which suggests I still haven’t made a leap in the quality of my fiction.

In the past two years’ Stats posts, I mentioned I was working on improving a specific element in my fiction. I think I made progress on that this year, but the jury is still out on whether it’s made a difference. I unfortunately only got two new stories out the door this year, one for the Homeless Moon chapbook and the other only recently sent out, so I haven’t yet gotten editorial reaction to it.

The coming year will tell whether or not I have made a significant improvement. I’m already working to get more new stories out the door this year, while also rewriting several older ones based on pro editors’ comments. We’ll see if that makes a difference.

Wow–it’s amazing how these blogosphere debates in the SF/F writing community go viral like Sauron’s army sweeping over Middle Earth. Here’s what I think about this endless “payrate debate,” in case anyone out there in radio-land is listening (I DJed enough 2AM college radio shows to know that it’s often dead air out there :) ).

I think the fact that short fiction pay rates are not a “living wage” is irrelevant. Short fiction is a dying industry with a tiny consumer base; it can’t pay a living wage anymore. Genre novel publishing pay for mid-list writers is getting smaller every year; even with “high” advances like $50,000, novels can’t pay a living wage either. Connie Willis, at a workshop I attended, said that the era when the majority of writers could make a living at it is gone. I agree.

The only point I see in the wage debate is that if this magazine Black Matrix is spending lots of money to produce a slick glossy magazine but only paying 1/5 cent per word for fiction, their budgeting priorities are way wrong. The biggest expense for my magazine by far is paying the authors, and that’s how it should be. Isn’t the fiction the priority?

It also saddens me to see these same-old endlessly circuitous debates between pro writers and aspiring ones, like similar arguments over self-publishing. The gifted pro writers who’ve never struggled through hundreds of rejections don’t understand what it’s like to be struggling like that, and the aspiring writers don’t understand that publishing is not an elitist system that’s stacked against them. Neither truly understands the other’s point, so they argue endlessly.

The saddest thing to me is all the time they both sink into it–time that would be better spent writing! :)

I'll always be indebted to my buddy Keith for loaning me Ben Hamper's Tales of the Rivethead back in high school. For folks unfamiliar with Hamper's work a good taste can be found here:

Originally, I thought Pete was only staying put because he was frozen with snake-dread and terrified of my feet. However, it's been two weeks now and I have come to believe he's simply indecisive and lazy as shit. Seeing as how I can relate to both of these characteristics, I've found no good reason to prod him out from underneath my dryer.

It turns out that a little old lady, a little old Catholic lady, used to live in our apartment. At least I’m starting to think so since I received a copy of SOUL magazine addressed to her.

Oh. Oh boy. Wow.

This one is a train wreck of modern day Catholic paganism. We have the 1917 manifestation of the Virgin Mary to a trio of poor children, shepherds of course, in Portugal; the delivery of three sacred letters meant to be opened only after a certain date (the third was supposed to herald in the Apocalypse); Padre Pio, he of the stigmata, fingerless gloves, and the occasional dubious behavior in the confessional; and, my favorite and the one I hadn’t heard of, the Blue Army.

What’s the Blue Army?


From SOUL magazine: “the Blue Army was established to serve as the spiritual army of Our Lady of Fatima against the atheistic Red Army of the Soviet Union, which was then threatening the world. For more than 50 years Blue Army members fervently prayed the daily Rosary for the intention of ending religious persecution in Russia and for an end to the Cold war between the Soviet Union and the free nations of Europe. MISSION OF BLUE ARMY . . . THOROUGHLY ACCOMPLISHED.” [All caps theirs]

There’s one section in the magazine where readers send in their testimonials. One is from a social worker that frightened away gang members who wanted to attack her after her prayers caused angels with machine guns to appear at her side.

No shit.

There’s the little squib in the legal section under the Table of Contents that says "this publication has been approved by a censor of the Diocese and holds nothing in it contrary to faith or morals”.

I could go on. Each page is like a devout processional of believers holding aloft a palanquin bearing a bed of white roses and a marble statue of the Virgin Mary wearing a golden crown.


In other words, you’re all getting Rosary beads for Christmas.

The current wildfire blog topic in SF/F short fiction circles has been very low-paying magazines and whether it’s worth it for an author to submit to them. One of the suggested benefits of submitting is for young authors to get publication credits, which they then can cite in their cover letters to other magazines in order to impress the editors.

I read a blog post by Ann Leckie, Associate Editor at Podcastle, which pretty much completely epitomizes what I feel about fiction credits in a cover letter when I read submissions for BCS.

I do glance at credits in cover letters, and they do have some impact on how much time or length I will give a story to let it impress me. But by far the most important thing is the quality of the story. By far.

And I share her admission that there are a very few credits that can have the opposite effect. They would never make me discount a great story, and they would never put me off on reading future submissions by that author. But on occasion, they can have a negative impact on how much time or length I will give that story to impress me.

So I share her admonition: write as well as you can. In the case of BCS, where I include comments in all rejection letters, perhaps spend a few moments thinking about why I said your story didn’t work for me or for BCS. Then please send me a better one.

I have a story out in the new issue of The Future Fire, a politically-oriented online SF magazine featuring a super-awesome ironical Nietzsche quote (perhaps the best kind of Nietzsche quote) about the value of escapism.

To invent stories about a world other than this one has no meaning at all, unless an instinct of slander, belittling, and suspicion against life is strong in us: in that case, we avenge ourselves against life with a phantasmagoria of another, a better life.

—F. Nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung

“Maryann Saves the World” is a piece of full-on, unapologetic, angry environmentalist escapism I sat down and wrote in a huff after watching some of my favorite woods in the whole world (in Westwood, a little town where I grew up, named for its awesome, under-appreciated, steadily vanishing woods) get knocked down and dynamited and replaced with landscaping and mcmansions. Writing it was a wonderful catharsis, which will completely justify that Nietzsche quote—and in by-no-means ironic fashion—unless, by some miraculous stroke of wish-fulfillment, a few complacent armchair environmentalists find their way to it, read it, and are re-energized to change their evil ways.

If you fit that description, please go read!

Here’s a little piece of the super-cool angry mansion-eating thicket illustration the story got from crafty artist Carmen:

Good news! You can now read my story "Knight in the Kingdom of Rain" at Crossed Genres!

http://crossedgenres.com/archives/013/knight-in-the-kingdom-of-rain-by-jason-s-ridler/

It's a pretty short piece, around a thousand words, so why not give it a whirl and see a my own favorite monstrous creation: THE MUD SHARK!

Thanks to Bart and KT for buying the story. Hope you all enjoy it.

Huzzah!

JSR