A Good Rejection; and Another Not So…

First the good rejection. My story, “The Last Ride of Harvey Mushman” survived the slush pile at Abyss & Apex, an award winning semi-pro magazine. The personal rejection that arrived this morning from the Editor-in-chief was very straight forward. There were no problems with the story other than it didn’t fit the personal tastes of the editor.
I can see that. Not everyone would automatically like stories with a motorcycle race as the setting. What I am taking away from this rejection is that there were no problems with the story, craft or otherwise. It just was not a good fit. Off to another market with this one. ASAP.

Now the bad rejection… “History” sat at a market for a very long time. They had been closed to submissions for nearly a year when they announced recently that they were reopening to submissions on August 1st. Previously, their guidelines page had told authors not to query the status of stories, that the slush pile was so large that they needed time to deal with it, but not to worry they would contact everyone as soon as a decision had been made.
With the re-opening to submissions announcement they removed the ban on submission queries, and since they were going to be open to submissions in a few days, I decided yesterday that it was a good time to query.
Yesterday, I got a form letter rejection.
The response to my query was very fast. Either they had decided to reject it before my query and failed to inform me, or they made a snap judgment about it after sitting on it for 455 days. (That’s right; a year and a quarter!) Very unsatisfying. Very.

I keep my chin up because the good rejections are out numbering the bad ones.