Richard Dansky

Sometimes stories get rejected. It happens to good stories. It happens to bad stories. It happens to my stories, and your stories, and pretty much everyone who isn’t Neil Gaiman’s stories. That being said, there are reasons behind every rejection, even the rejections of stories that might be pretty good. They’re not always good reasons. They’re not always communicated, they’re not always right, and they’re not always logical. But they’re there, and they can occasionally be anticipated and avoided. To wit:

1. Your Opening Stinks – Here’s a dirty little secret for you. Most editors don’t read every line of every story they get sent. That’s because if they did, they’d be reading nothing but slushpile submissions until the heat-death of the universe, and even then there’d be another stack waiting in the first mailbox of the next universe over. They’re busy people, and they can’t afford to spend time on a story that has come onstate with the metaphorical equivalent of doing a faceplant into the orchestra pit and jamming its head inside the tuba. The surest way to get an editor to read the second page of your story is to put maximum time into polishing the first and making it enticing and punchy. And yes, there’s more to this than having a zinger for a first line – make sure you’re actually opening a story, instead of throwing out your best bon mot and hoping for lightning to strike.
2. It’s The Wrong Market Part A (You sent it to the wrong place) – Reading submission guidelines is not an art form. Hell, it’s not even particularly arduous, because the only thing folks hate more than reading submission guidelines is writing them. (Seriously. You think it’s fun to hammer out “For the love of God, do not tell me about the ancient vampire who lives in your basement” for the three hundredth time?) The least you can do, in that case, is read the damn things so that you don’t end up adding insult to injury and, say, sending a completely Lovecraft-free manuscript to an anthology called “Temple of the Tentacles: A Tribute to H.P. Lovecraft”. If the story doesn’t fit, it doesn’t fit no matter how good it is, and you look like an ass for having sent it. You’ve wasted your time, the editor’s time, and possibly more of your time down the road, as there’s a non-zero chance the editor who wrote the guidelines you ignored will say to themselves, “Aha! The schmuck who can’t read guidelines!” the next time one of your stories crosses their desk.
3. It’s The Wrong Market Part B (Something you didn’t know) – Mind you, very few markets actually expect authors t be psychic, which is good. After all, if we were psychic, we would have foreseen what writing professionally actually does to your posture, self-esteem, and liver, and chosen different callings. And with that in mind, sometimes there’s a finer granularity at work in the selection process than the guidelines describes. The editor of a humorous horror anthology may have a weakness for slapstick that doesn’t get communicated until the rejection letter, when you sent in something with more puns and less pie in the face. Or a vampire antho may have an implicit, rather than explicit “no sparkling” policy. You get the idea. If that’s the case, it’s regrettable, but them’s the breaks. It’s not a comment on your story, other than it’s a bad fit for that particular market.
4. You Rushed It Out The Door – Your story may be good. Your story may be great. But if you shove it out the door before it’s ready – before you’ve had time to revise, to clean it up, to get other people’s critical eyes on it, then you’re potentially shortchanging both yourself and your story. Look, you owe it to yourself and to your writing to get the best possible version of every piece you write out there. That means, no matter how in love you are with it, no matter how flushed you are with the victory of finishing the piece, don’t let real live editors see it until you’ve done the writing equivalent of waking up the next morning in bed with it and trying to remember if you ever learned its first name. Take your time. Take another, critical look once the rush has worn off – and then another and another. There’s all kinds of definitions of “done”, and “I just typed the last word” is the least useful of the bunch, professionally speaking.
5. Your Cover Letter Was Obnoxious Beyond All Human Comprehension – You do not need to list every writing credit you’ve ever had, going back to the stuff you wrote for your middle school newspaper. This goes doubly true of by doing so, you turn your cover letter into the missing volume from The Wheel of Time. If you’re good enough to have that many credits, your writing should speak for itself, and your letter should just have edited highlights. Similarly, getting overly cute, slamming other authors the editor you’re writing to has published, or including the phrase “I bet you’re never going to read this anyway” are surefire routes to the “we’ll call you” pile. The first two are annoying; the third rapidly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
6. You Included An Easter Egg In The Text – And by “easter egg”, I mean putting “Ha ha I bet you don’t read this far” in the text somewhere an editor who is actually reading your story is likely to read it. I mean, sure, it seems funny and original when you’re six tequilas to the wind, but then again, so does watching Zardoz. For one thing, I can assure you that no one, ever, has thought of that joke before, and no editor has ever stumbled across it[i]. For another, you’ve just told every editor who does get that far in your manuscript that they’re not professional enough to do their jobs. And rest assured, there’s nothing editors like more than being told they’re rank amateurs by the folks vying for their favor.
7. They Already Got One, And Oh Yes, It’s Very Nice – No matter how good your story is, if an editor just bought something similar to it, it’s going to be a tough sell. At moments like that, your only crime is having gotten there second. It doesn’t mean it’s a bad story. It doesn’t mean that the market in question is forever closed to it. It just means that most editors aren’t going to risk running two “school cafeteria worker defeats hopping vampires through pluck and spatulas” stories in a time frame shorter than a Kardashian marriage.
8. The Editor Is Wrong – People make bad choices. So, occasionally, do editors. It’s not a moral judgment on you, or on them. It just happens. The anecdotes about the number of editors who rejected Carrie or Harry Potter[ii] are legion; the mind boggles at the numbers of good or great short stories rejected by multiple editors before they found homes. It happens. It’s not you. And it’s not your story. At least, not always.

October is for scary stories, or so I’ve been told. Happy Halloween, folks. Enjoy.

*****

“When Even The Vampires Don’t Want You”

There comes a point in time when even the vampires don’t want you. I know. I’m there.

Now don’t you go telling me there’s no such thing as vampires. They’re real. I’ve seen them. And they’re all over this damn bar.

It’s why I started coming here, really. To find them. To meet them. To give myself to one of them. No, not like some dumbass teenager who wants a million years of moonlight and roses, and hasn’t quite figured out that to the pretty vampire boy over there, you’re not a love interest, you’re lunch. I knew what I was getting into. I knew what I wanted to get into. And I wanted one of them to kill me.

I mean, it makes sense, right? Most people spend their whole lives just taking up space and using stuff. And then, when they die, they do it some more. An expensive funeral, a plot of land, a wooden box and a shiny rock planted on top of you – all that costs money. All that uses stuff. All that’s just a damn waste. And I didn’t want – I don’t want – any part of it.

I ask the bartender for another beer. Keystone. It’s crap, but it makes my money go further. One of the vampires walks past me, a girl in a black dress buttoned up to her neck and ruffled down to the floor. I’ve seen her here before. Seen her circle around damn fool boys who don’t know any better, make them fall in love in between two heartbeats and then lead them off to God knows where. They think they’re getting a little taste of goth hanky panky. She’s taking one from column B.

I’ve never seen one come back yet, but round midnight she’s here again. Alone.

I smile at her as she goes by. She pretends not to notice. I’m not pretty enough for her. Or she doesn’t like cheap beer. Or maybe she just likes to chase her food a little. The hell if I know. All I do know is that I’ve been coming here for weeks and I’m still here.

It was the plan, you see. Find a vampire, get killed by a vampire, get eaten by a vampire, don’t come back as a vampire. Simple stuff. I figure if I’m going to die – and I want to die, make no mistake about that – someone might as well get some use out of it. I don’t want some funeral home scooping out my guts and throwing them in the trash. I don’t want someone pumping me full of preservatives so I’m a pickle a thousand years after I’m dead. I just want my death to be useful for something, even if that something’s just one meal for a monster. I mean, monsters gotta eat too, right?

That’s what I thought when I found them. I didn’t judge. I still don’t. I just tracked them to the bar, and showed up, and waited. That was days back. Weeks. Maybe a month. I lost track of time. As long as the beer money holds out, I’m fine. The bartender occasionally brings me a sandwich. It’s nice of him. I guess I’m his best customer. It’s not like the vampires drink, after all.

That’s how I spot them here, after all. They don’t want beer. They just want blood. Not just any blood, either. They want it from pretty girls and handsome boys. Sad poets and lost souls looking for shining knights. How this place keeps bringing them in is beyond me. It’s dark and it’s dingy and half the crap in the jukebox won’t play. It’s in the wrong part of town and it’s hard to find and the beer selection sucks.

They’ve got red wine, though. Lots and lots of red wine. I don’t drink it. Maybe that’s my problem.

Then again, I’m not a poet. Never have been. I used to be a project manager. Software. Nothing too exciting, but it was work, and it was with people, and we produced something. It was useful. People liked the product. And that was something. It made me feel good.

But then I got sick. And then I got fired, because I got sick and in this damn state they can fire you for any damn thing they want. And  when you’ve got six months to live and not a whole hell of a lot of cash saved up, you don’t have a lot of options. You can spend it all – the time and the money – suing the bastards in hopes of getting your job back, so you can get the bennies just in time to die, broke. Or you can try to pay for the treatment yourself, and die, broke anyway. Or you can say the hell with it and spend it all on beer, and go out on your own terms.

Generally, that doesn’t involve vampires. Generally, people don’t die of what I’m dying of, either.

Another vampire walks past me. He’s a little older, a little less human looking. Doesn’t blink enough, like he’s forgotten he’s supposed to do that. Sharp dresser, though. They’re all sharp dressers. I used to be a sharp dresser.

He looks at me. That’s new. I stare back. “Can I buy you a drink?” I say, and wave my Keystone at him. Wrong thing to say. Stupid.

He shakes his head. Doesn’t walk away. That’s new.

“You should find another bar,” he says, and points at the door.

“I’m not leaving,” I say. “I’ve got just as much right to drink here as you do.”

I’m half-expecting some long-winded speech about how rights don’t apply to them, or maybe how when he talked to Cicero about human rights legislations and hate crimes against vampires, or God knows what else.

I don’t get that. I get a shrug and a sigh. Then I get a finger, pointed, at the door. “Seriously. You should go.”

“I don’t want to leave,” I tell him. “If you want me out of here, you’ll have to take me out yourself.”

The bar gets quiet. Maybe the jukebox picked a good time to break down. Maybe everyone’s hushed to hear what’s happening. Maybe I’m just stupid and melodramatic and dying, and I want this to be big. Important, even.

The bartender steps forward to intervene, and the vampire raises a hand. It’s the universal sign for “I’ll take care of this.” The bartender stops. He blinks. Then he turns away and starts washing glasses with a dirty rag. He knows. Everyone here knows. I’m an idiot. The sad poets know. The lost girls know. It’s why they come here.

And they still won’t take me.

“Please,” I say. The bar stays quiet.

“No,” the vampire says.

My guts churn. My vision blurs. The beer bottle slips out of my fingers. It falls to the floor and breaks. A little beer spills. A lot of glass shatters.

“Why not?” I finally croak out.

“Does it matter?” He stares at me and doesn’t blink.

“Yes,” I say, while my mind races. I’m too old. I’m too ugly. I drink the wrong beer. I don’t dress right. I like the wrong music. I’m not a sad poet. I’m not a poet at all. There’s no poetry in me, just blood and meat and sadness and-

“You’d taste bad,” he says, and walks away. Over his shoulder, I hear him add, “Now you should go.”

Around him, the bar comes back to life. The music starts again, or it seems to. People talk. Vampires talk. Vampires talk to people. I feel alone. I feel sick. Whatever’s in my gut is trying to get out.

A shadow falls over me. I look up. It’s the bartender. “I’m sorry,” he says, and hands me another beer, some domestic brand I don’t recognize. Probably trying to get rid of it because he can’t sell it. I don’t care. “One for the road. You’ll be leaving, right?”

I take a swig. My mouth tastes like bile and sour milk. The beer is too sharp and on the edge of skunked. Together the tastes are indescribable. Disgusting. Horrible.

Maybe it’s an acquired taste. Maybe there are other acquired tastes. Maybe I’ll wait a little longer.

“Not yet,” I say, and reach for the beer again. “Not just yet.”