short fiction

You are currently browsing the archive for the short fiction category.

My new She Has No Head! post is up on CSBG.  The column this week is a review and commentary on the first issue of Marvel’s Girl Comics.

The Torture Continues Header postable

I got another two short fiction rejections over the last couple months, so I felt compelled to update.  The funny thing is that one was from a really major literary magazine that I’d love to get into, and one was from a pretty small zine (that I’d still love to get into), but you’d think the major publication would hurt more, but it’s really the other way around.  You know if The New Yorker (not who I submitted to by the way) rejects you it’s easy to blow off, it’s like “well duh, they’re The NEW YORKER, of course they don’t want little ole me.”  But the little magazine?  C’MON!

Anyway, I’ll be honest it’s pretty frustrating to get short fiction rejections while working on agent revisions for my book.  It really undermines my confidence level.  So um, I’m just going to pretend this didn’t happen.  Nothing to see here folks…carry on…

Updated Stats:  10 out of 11 Rejected, 1 still out.  Bah.

The Torture Continues Header postable

I’ve gotten a couple short fiction rejections recently, so I thought I’d update my stats for those of you keeping score.

Updated Stats:  8 of 11 rejected.  3 still out.

Mumble mumble…I’ll show you literary magazines that don’t want my work, cause someday I’m gonna be famous, that’s right and you’re gonna be begging to print my work and we’ll just see who’s rejecting who then…that’s right…We’ll JUST See!  Er…um…did I just say that out loud?  Uh, nevermind…and uh, as you were…

:)

The Torture Continues Header YES! postable

So, instead of having to go through the horrible process of sending out massive amounts of query letters to agents for my novel (and likely receiving massive amounts of rejections) I got incredibly lucky and had two excellent agents from big agencies competing for my book over the last week.

I’m not going to go into specifics here for a variety of reasons but basically one agent came to me via a query I actually sent last year (long crazy story that worked out beautifully) and one agent came to me through a connection.  It was a brutal decision (one I never imagined I’d have to make) deciding between these two fantastic individuals, but I finally did make a decision this week and I’m proud to say that I’m officially working exclusively with one of the agents on my book.

We’ll be doing revisions for the foreseeable future – I have no idea how long, but I hope I can get it done quickly so we can continue moving forward – but I thought you’d all like to know about this great moment of happiness and success in the deluge that is usually REJECTION!

Please pause of a moment of pure happiness:

:)

Now if only I can get some of these damn short fiction pieces published.  In fact, just to keep my ego in check…let’s do a status update on those.  It’s not looking pretty folks…

Phase III Updated Stats:  6 of 10 Rejected.  4 still out there.

Sidenote:  this is tagged ‘champagne’ because I will be drinking an entire bottle of it on my own tonight.  Whee!

the-torture-continues-header-postable

Oy.  Here we are again.  Was this a mistake?  It’s sure going to feel like one if none of these other stories come back with a “yes please”.

So add another rejection to the pile.  This was my first ever submission to a Science Fiction/Fantasy publication and I knew it was a long shot as the piece is a bit of an orphan…sort of literary, sort of superhero genre-y (like my novel, “le sigh”).

Anyway, the conundrum now is whether to revise based on the very nice personal rejection I got, or to just send it out to someone else.  These guys, though they took the time to write a personal rejection and critique, did not “get” my piece.  Is that my failing or theirs as readers?  It’s really could be either.  Hell, I don’t know.  I think I’ll sit on it for a week and then re-read it.  Decide then.  Until then…or until the next rejection…yay!…here are the updated stats.

Updated Stats:  4 of 9 rejected.  5 still out there.

the-torture-continues

Sonofabitch part deux.

That’s right folks.  More goddman rejections.  At least they’re coming through fast so I can get back to revise and resubmit.  Of course, since I’m about to engage in Query Letter Hell, it’s a bit harder on the ego to get short fiction rejections.  Let me just show you how that looks:

“Oh woe is me…if nobody even wants my short fiction who the hell is going to want my giant possibly too long novel?!  Oh. My. Gods.  Someone bring me razor blades!”

Yeah, it’ll look something like that.

For those of you keeping score (you sadists):

Phase III Rejection Stats:  3 of 9 rejected.  6 still out there.

At least five newish stories are still cooking in the old brain…hoping to be born onto paper (or at least finished).  I came up with a brilliant idea the other night that I totally stole from something Tina Fey said (not to me obviously…well, maybe she said it to me through the TV…).  Anyway, even Adam wants to steal it, that’s how good it is.  Now to get it down…no problem.  Yeah right.

the-torture-continues-header-postable

Sonofabitch.

Another rejection.  I shouldn’t be surprised as this was for a highly competitive contest with significant prize money ($3k for first place).  Yet I find myself bummed and pissed regardless.  I’ve got another good place to send this particular story though, so it’s good to know it’s free to go out into the world and try again.

Updated Stats: 2 of 8 rejected, 6 still out there.

UPDATE: Ha! Eat that rejection, I’ve moved on from sadness over rejection and within 30 minutes resubmitted this piece elsewhere.  HA!  Updated UPDATED Stats:  2 of 9 rejected, 7 still out there.

the-torture-continues-header-postable1

That’s right, you all know what this image means…we got a rejection letter…yay! (note sarcasm)

The first of the eight that went out has come back with a “thanks but no thanks”.  I’m disappointed that this didn’t work out because I continue to really like this story and this is (I think) its third rejection.

I feel like that means I should take it back to the drawing board, but as discussed previously, I was aiming a bit high last year, and even the people that rejected it this year are pretty difficult to crack, so maybe it’s just not a story that can crack that larger market?  I think I’ll send it out one more time and if it comes back I’ll send it to revision hell.

On the upside (we must always find an upside) they got back to me very quickly which is always great because then you can put stories back into circulation quickly.

Updated Stats (for those of you keeping score): 1 of 8 rejected, 7 still out there working their magic.

the-torture-continues-header

And with my final Phase II rejection safely in my filing cabinet, we begin Phase III!

I sent out eight pieces over the last few days to various literary magazines and competitions – some harder to crack than others, some that pay and some that just give you the glory of publication (plus author copies!) and so we’ll start the board running with 8 pieces for Phase III in 2009.

Once I get the novel queries out from under me I have another four or five short fiction pieces I hope to work on and get out there, but it will probably be a couple months before I get to that.

The good news is that, whether these pieces go anywhere or not, as of March 2009 I have submitted more pieces than I submitted in all of 2008, so that’s a good place to start!  Unemployment does have its benefits I suppose.

So here’s the official status update:

Phase II: The final tally is – 0 for 7 in 2008.  A not good year for me and short fiction.  Here’s to 2009 kicking 2008’s ass in every possible way.

Phase III: 8 submissions out the door.

delicateediblebirds

Delicate Edible Birds.  By Lauren Groff.  Short Fiction Collection

Wow.  I really don’t even know how to begin.  I’m always complaining that my biggest problem with short story collections, which I read frequently, is that when viewed as a whole,  they tend to be uneven.  In other words, some stories are amazing and others are just “eh”.  Recently I read a collection by Katherine Shonk titled Red Passport and was surprised because it was the most well balanced collection I had read in years, unfortunately, though I enjoyed the collection, I was ultimately really let down by the way she chose to end each of the pieces, thus keeping it from being the fulfilling experience I had hoped for.  So the world must have heard my whining and complaining because it sent me Lauren Groff’s wonderful and delicious Delicate Edible Birds.  In fairness, the world sent me Groff’s book through a fantastic new blog called Andrew’s Book Club (so thank you Andrew!).

I don’t think I’ve read a collection this spectacular since, well quite frankly I’m not sure I ever have.  It is certainly the best contemporary collection I’ve read in recent memory.  I’m not sure it can beat out one of my long time favorites, Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger, but I’m also not sure it’s fair to compare the two.  Contemporary short fiction is very different I think than reading classic collections by authors like Salinger and Hemingway.  Mind you I’m not making a judgement that contemporary short fiction is better or worse – just different.  In the past I’ve had trouble comparing them (apparently I still do).  Regardless, I can’t think of a real flaw in Groff’s entire collection.  Every single story was moving, engaging, emotionally resonant, and beautifully crafted.  She had interesting ideas that hooked me from the first lines, and finely crafted characters and even her simplier tales moved me, twice to tears and once (in the title piece Delicate Edible Birds) to an impotent rage that I don’t think I’ve ever experienced before in reading a short story.  Amazing.

Every single story delivered.  The one story that I would select as my least favorite (Fugue) was still a fine story, but I did find it a bit confusing with many female characters/names, and a deliberately confusing storyline that involved amnesia and multiple location shifts.  It had the least emotional resonance for me, and delivered the least in the end for me of all the pieces.  I’d list my other favorites, but that’s probably all the rest of them, ah hell, I’ll list them anyway:

Lucky Chow Fun begins so simply, but has an incredibly powerful undertow running throughout it, constantly threatening to drag you under.  This story threatens terrible things, but refreshingly, only delivers some of them, which is accurate I think to how life really works and serves to make the story that much more powerful.

L. Debard and Aliette is a haunting and lovely tale about true love and Romeo & Juliet level ‘missed connection’. This one though beautiful and full of wonderful moments, has a terrible bite to it that shocked me in its intensity.

Majorette is a brutally honest and desperate little gem about a family that begins and ends in ways I never expected.

Blythe is a sharp and cutting tale about art and women and the human perspective that I found wonderfully enjoyable.

The Wife of the Dictator is an exposing tale of politics and gossip, told in the third person omniscent “we” that I have only experienced once before (in Joshua FerrisThen We Came To The End) and which I thought he handled well, but that few others could manage without sounding like pretentious jerks.  Suffice to say there is not a pretentious jerk to be seen in Groff’s story, and in fact, it is somehow the perfect perspective for a group of gossipy women stuck on the outside of a situation, bored and judging.  It works exceptionally well.

Watershed in the hands of a lesser writer could be cliche and overwrought but is instead beautiful and desperate and horribly horribly sad and real, poignant in a way most writers aim for and miss by a mile (me included).  Watershed moved me to frequent tears.  No small feat.

Sir Fleeting wonderfully charts the life of a woman and her life long flirtation with a dashing man that never really manifests in the ways she expects.  This story was fascinating in its ability to turn expectation (both the character’s and the reader’s) on its ear.  Really solid stuff.

And Delicate Edible Birds.  I suppose of all of those that I loved, Watershed and L. Debard and Aliette stayed with me the most – until I read the last piece, the title piece, Delicate Edible Birds, which truly moved me in a way I have never before been moved in a short work.   Birds, written in third person seemlessly tells the story of five reporters in France during World War II, the transitions were so smooth and the characters so well drawn that it almost felt like five different first person tales…I had to go back while writing this actually to confirm that it IS in fact written in third.  It is.  Brilliant.  And this story, which kept me rapt with every turning page, left me naked and angry and helpless in its last sentences.  Which is not a bad thing…in fact it’s like some kind of storytelling miracle.  If it wasn’t so perfect as is I would have begged for more.

Groff has a novel out there as well, The Monsters of Templeton, which I’ve added to my list of books to buy, and I suggest you run, don’t walk, to your nearest bookstore for both of these as well.  5.0 Stars (out of 5).

« Older entries