Made it to the final cut for Sword & Sorceress, but not through it. I had so very much hoped to sell “Kingspeaker” on its first trip out the door — that would have rocked.
<woeful sigh>
I’m rather bummed about this one, I must admit. It’s easier to deal with rejections that aren’t near misses: you send the story, they don’t like it, you move on. Being told that they almost bought your story is spectacularly frustrating.
I’m sorry! I’m very curious to see what the line up for this new one will be. I really wanted to submit to that but came up against some sort of mental block about sword and sorcery fantasy. *curses self, will try again next year*
I had actually meant, but forgot, to post a bit of anecdotal evidence: I sent them first a story that was wholeheartedly sword-and-sorcery, but rather conventional, and it got bounced in five days. Then I sent them “Kingspeaker,” which is much more borderline in terms of S&S but also a more interesting story, and that one they held onto. So they seem to have reasonably flexible tastes.
Someone else said in her letter they said they had enough excellent stories for three anthos, so the competition was apparently super dooper tight.
I think that paragraph is getting stuck in everybody’s rejection letter, but yeah.
I gave it a shot, but the most important lesson I learned was that my skills either do not lie in writing fantasy, or they have atrophied due to extreme disuse. My strong point is urban fantasy. This project was -hard- for me, and I didn’t have high hopes with what I finally submitted.
I’m anxious to see who gets in, and what the lineup looks like.
Well, if anybody could write everything perfectly, we’d have to lynch them. <g>
I’m sorry – that would’ve been really exciting. You must have other anthology subs going, though, don’t you?
Nothing else to an anthology at the moment, though plenty of magazine subs. (I’m not yet to the point of being invited to anthos, and the number of them with open calls is pretty low. Most of the ones that do that also claim to pay you a percentage of the royalties, which translates to nothing.)
Well, boo to S&S. I liked Kingspeaker quite a bit. I’m sure it will sell somewhere.
I’m sure it will, too — but that would have been an awfully neat place to sell it.
Sorry to hear that. :-/ Good luck sending it out though. What’s the next market on the list, or have you decided?
It’s already at F&SF; I send everything there, on the philosophy that someday something will stick, right?
Right! 🙂
After I read your journal, I found out a friend of mine also had her story cut from the anthology in the final round. It’s a shame that S&S can’t do more than one anthology per year, or something…
